Harmonium - Use in Western Popular Music

Use in Western Popular Music

• Steve Adey (Scottish singer/songwriter) uses a harmonium on many songs from his 2006 album All Things Real.
• Tori Amos played a harmonium during her Boys For Pele tour in 1996.
• Sara Bareilles has used a harmonium to accompany herself in live performances of "Kaleidoscope Heart", a song from her album Kaleidoscope Heart.
• Duncan Sheik uses the harmonium extensively throughout the score of Spring Awakening.
• The Beatles used it in many recordings, including "Doctor Robert", "The Inner Light", "We Can Work It Out", "Cry Baby Cry", "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite", "Rocky Raccoon", "The Word", and in the final chord of "A Day in the Life". In recording "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!", the Beatles' engineer, Geoff Emerick, recalled producer George Martin playing the harmonium for hours trying to create the Pablo Fanque circus atmosphere that inspired the song: "You have to pump a harmonium with your feet and he was pumping away for about four hours. He collapsed onto the floor after that, laying there spreadeagled and exhausted!"
• Jeff Buckley used a harmonium on the introduction of the song "Lover, You Should Have Come Over" from the album Grace.
• Future of Forestry used a harmonium in "Slow your Breath Down" from their album Travel II EP.
• Allen Ginsberg, in his 1970s recording called First Blues: Rags, Ballads and Harmonium Songs, in which he sets his poetry to music, "accompanies himself with a small hand-pumped harmonium from India".
• David Gray has used a harmonium extensively in his live shows, most notably on the Lost and Found tour in support of Foundling.
• Lisa Hannigan uses a harmonium extensively in her album Sea Sew.
• The National are also known to use a harmonium on occasion, with extensive use on their album High Violet.
• Nico, in most of her post-Velvet Underground career, is characterized by her accompanying herself on harmonium in songs with a Gothic style that used drone, especially on her albums The Marble Index (1969), Desertshore (1970) and The End... (1974).
• Pink Floyd make use of the harmonium on the album The Final Cut.
• Radiohead used an antique harmonium on "Motion Picture Soundtrack" on Kid A. They toured with the instrument throughout 2001 until it broke during a show in Oxford, England, on July 7.
• Shilpa Ray and her Happy Hookers, an indie music band, uses an Indian harmonium as the lead instrument.
• Sigur Rós use the harmonium on many of their tracks, including "Samskeyti" and acoustic versions of "Vaka", "Starálfur", "Heysátan" and "Von" on the double EP Hvarf/Heim.
• The Low Anthem, the Americana band from Rhode Island frequently use a portable harmonium on songs like "To them ghosts who write history books", "Cage the songbird", "Boeing 737",...
• Talk Talk used a harmonium, played by Tim Friese-Greene, on their albums Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock.
• Tom Waits plays the harmonium on his albums Swordfishtrombones and Rain Dogs, and it appears also on Night on Earth, the soundtrack of Jim Jarmusch's film that bears the same title.
• Zapoppin' (from Falmouth, UK) use the harmonium on many of their songs.
• The song "Music for a Found Harmonium", named after the instrument, appears in a variety of movies, including Napoleon Dynamite.
• Sharon Van Etten uses a harmonium on many songs, both live and studio versions.
• Neil Young plays "Like A Hurricane" on a harmonium, for example on the MTV Unplugged recording in 1993.