He released his self-titled album (Hozier) in September 2014. After a five year hiatus, he released his second album, Wasteland, Baby!, in March 2019. He released his third album, Unreal Unearth, in August 2023, followed by an EP of cut songs titled Unheard; one of these tracks, "Too Sweet", became Hozier's biggest commercial success since "Take Me to Church" a decade prior.
Discography:
- Hozier (2014)Singles
- Wasteland, Baby! (2019)Singles
- Unreal Unearth (2023)Singles
- Unheard EP (2024)Singles
Take me to Church, I'll worship you like a dog at the shrine of your tropes:
- The Anti-Nihilist: "No Plan" is about how nothing in life matters because there is no grand design, so why not fall in love.
- Audience Participation Song: For the chorus of “Would That I,” Hozier sings the lyrics while the concert audience sings the “Oh, oh” backing vocals
. - The Big Guy: He's 6'5" and is affectionately referred to as "the big friendly giant" by fans.
- Blasphemous Boast: "Francesca" contains the lyric "Heaven is not fit to house a love like you and I".
- The Cameo:
- Katie McGrath is the star of the "From Eden" music video.
- Stephen Rea (The Crying Game, V for Vendetta, etc.) appears in the video for "Nina Cried Power".
- Anya Taylor-Joy in the "Dinner and Diatribes" video.
- Saoirse Ronan is the focus of the "Cherry Wine" video.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: It's exaggerated by his fans because it's fun, but he's definitely on a different wavelength than most folks.
- Deadpan Snarker: He has quite a sharp sense of humor as any interview or a look at his Twitter profile can attest.
- Domestic Abuse: "Cherry Wine" is about this.
- Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Possibly subverted in "Cherry Wine" if you interpret the song as being about this. The speaker's girlfriend is heavily implied to be abusing him emotionally and physically, but he still describes the relationship as being ideal.
- Downer Ending:
- The music video for "Take Me to Church": It revolves around a gay couple whose love is destroyed by a group of violent homophobes once their sexuality is found out. Their house is ransacked, one of the men is dragged to a fire, a box the couple shared is thrown into the fire, and the other man arrives at the scene just as his lover is being killed by the group.
- "Cherry Wine" is the last song on his self-titled album which features a man being emotionally and physically abused by his girlfriend, but he can never bring himself to leave her because he loves her.
- Dual-Meaning Chorus: "It Will Come Back," referring to the singer and his love like one would a stray animal.
- Elemental Motifs:
- Fire. The narrator of "Arsonist's Lullaby" has a life-long fascination with fire. In his second album, he makes references to fire in several songs, including "No Plan", "Nobody", and "Wasteland, Baby". "Would That I" compares his new lover to a ranging fire that burns down several trees, which represent his former lovers.
- His first album also has plenty of references to the earth/soil ("In the Woods Somewhere," "In A Week," and "Like Real People Do").
- Gay Aesop: The music video for "Take Me to Church" features one.
- Gentle Giant: He's very tall and known for his friendly, humorous nature with many fans affectionately referring to him as The BFG.
- Hypocrite: The speaker's girlfriend in "Cherry Wine," who is extremely jealous despite the fact that she is cheating on him.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Kind of unavoidable given that he's 6'5". Just look at him performing next to Mavis Staples (who is only five feet even, making her nearly a foot and a half shorter).
- Last-Name Basis: "Hozier" isn't a stage name, it's (one part of) his last name.
- Love Is Like Religion:
- "Take Me to Church" uses religious imagery throughout as the singer expresses wanting to worship his beloved instead of the church that rejected their love, with a prechorus of repeated amens.
- In "Foreigner's God", the singer expresses his love for a woman who does not conform to his society's edicts as "Screaming the name of a foreigner's god".
- Love Martyr: The speaker in "Cherry Wine" is this as he tolerates his girlfriend's jealousy, anger and infidelity (and possibly physical abuse).
- Lyrical Dissonance:
- "Cherry Wine" has a somewhat somber tone to it, but sounds like a typical love song... until you listen to the lyrics, which describe a relationship that sounds disturbingly close to Domestic Abuse.
- "In a Week" is a pretty-sounding song about a couple being together. But when one examines the lyrics, they'll realize it's rather unambiguously about two people being Together in Death and their bodies
decomposing and being eaten by animals. - "Shrike" is a very laid-back, romantic-sounding song, but it's also about the shrike, a bird who impales its prey on thorns. Hozier makes several clear references to that practice.
- "Like Real People Do" is another folksy acoustic ballad that starts out with the subject remembering how his lover dug him up from the earth one night because she was trying to bury something ELSE, and neither of them mention what she was doing before that. While it's a metaphor for two people with relationship secrets, it was also inspired by Seamus Heaney's poetry about the bog bodies found in the north of Ireland, so it can definitely be taken literally as the subject being one of the unquiet dead.
- Mercy Kill: "In the Woods Somewhere". That poor fox...
- Mood Whiplash: “Unknown / Nth” moves straight from the bridge’s emotionally devastating lyrics into an interjected Scatting of “Sha la la!” The contrast is cathartic and/or hilarious.
- Mythical Motifs: "Swan Upon Leda" likens real-life oppression to the Greek myth of Zeus raping Leda in the form of a swan.
- The Night Owl: The singer describes himself as such in "Too Sweet", noting in the chorus that he never goes to bed before 3 am.
- Nightmare Fetishist: Most prominently in "NFWMB" (Nothing Fucks With My Baby), which he helpfully explains. The lover in question is turned on by feeling the dead move in the earth below her - she's also terrifyingly strong and is or would be completely unfazed by the apocalypse, too powerful to be hurt, and the singer is into that."'You can't be harmed. It's nothing to do with me.' This person is just genuinely terrifying....and you love them for it."
- Non-Appearing Title:
- "Work Song," which is more about the genre/tone than anything in the lyrics.
- "Francesca" is about Francesca da Ramini and her lover Paolo Malatesta as portrayed in The Divine Comedy, but the name itself does not appear in the song.
- Not a Morning Person: "Too Sweet" opens with the singer stating that, "It can't be said that I'm a morning bird/It's ten o'clock before I say a word."
- Nothing Is Scarier: "In the Woods Somewhere". The speaker found...something in the woods.
- Protest Song:
- "Nina Cried Power" references historical singers of protest songs (among them Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, and Marvin Gaye) in a song about oppression.
- "Jackboot Jump" and "But the Wages" are songs protesting, respectively, fascism rising as a response to the rise of antifascism, and the fact that wages aren't increasing despite increased cost of living.
- Shout-Out:
- "Almost (Sweet Music)" weaves in references to The Supremes, Duke Ellington, Chet Baker note, and over a dozen classic jazz songs.
- "Someone New" references Aretha Franklin's "I Say a Little Prayer."
- The songs from his 2023 album Unreal Unearth are inspired by The Divine Comedy.
- Soprano and Gravel: An inverted version in "Nina Cried Power", with Mavis Staples as the gravel. Maybe "Baritone and Gravel?"
- Symbolic Serene Submersion: The promotional materials and album cover for Wasteland, Baby! heavily feature images and clips of Hozier in a flooded room, including some where he floats freely (white shirt and iconic long hair spreading out around him). Head photographer Jon Hozier-Byrne (Hozier's brother) describes the thought process behind the imagery:There's a great deal of doom and gloom enjoyed within the album, and an end of times-ness to it, so I think the shoot and what we're aiming for here reflects some of that. It actually reflects one or two of the lyrical themes as well in one or two numbers, which is nice.
- Together in Death: "In a Week" has a surprisingly graphic version of this.
- Tragic Villain: The protagonist of "Arsonist's Lullaby" doesn't want to set fires but feels unable to resist his urges and laments being controlled by his obsession.
- Tsundere: The speaker in "Cherry Wine" assumes his girlfriend is this while his descriptions of her make her sound much more like a Domestic Abuser.
- Uncommon Time: "From Eden" is in 5/4.
- The Undead: If you interpret "Like Real People Do" literally, the subject's lover was trying to bury something and accidentally dug him up as well.
- Villain Song: "Arsonist's Lullaby" tells the story of a guy who simply is driven to set things on fire and how he got to be that way, as described from his own perspective. It may not be right, but he acknowledges that it's just who he is. As the chorus explains:"All you have is your fire
And the place you need to reach
Don't you ever tame your demons
But always keep them on a leash" - You Are Worth Hell: "Francesca" is about a pair of lovers from The Divine Comedy who are being punished in hell for their extramarital affair. As the narrator says, even if they’re given a do-over, they will do it again.
