Natasha Hervatta
The Irish musician and song-writer from Bray has taken the world by storm with his soulful music. Here are some songs by Hozier to make you fall in love with him, if you haven't already!
Hozier pays tribute to the rush and drag of fickle feelings in the new video for "Someone New". The clip stars Natalie Dormer — known to many as Margaery Tyrell on Game of Thrones — as a woman whose mercurial tendencies mask an overwhelming loneliness. Dormer locks lips with various partners throughout the clip while Hozier, in silhouette, performs "Someone New," a charming, swinging number with a dark tint that emerges each time our heroine stares longingly into the distance, confronting her own solitude.
The song title "Jackie and Wilson" is a playful nod, of course, to the great R&B singer Jackie Wilson.
When asked to elaborate about the song title, Hozier wrote NPR music an email to explain his love for the great Jackie Wilson, who died 6 years before Hozier was born:
"He's a big influence for me, he's fantastic. I think Elvis was the white Jackie Wilson, rather than any other way 'round. I suppose the song is about being lost. There's sometimes a recurring theme of looking from the outside in and idealising some idea of somebody or something as a cure for oneself. It's also me trying to enjoy writing something more fun, playing something more fun."
This raw emotional song was recorded live in the early morning on an abandoned hotel rooftop accompanied by the dawn chorus. Hozier recalled during a gig at Boston's Café 939. "It was like five in the morning and I was so tired… and it ended up on the first EP!"
Hozier, a struggling musician at the time of its writing, wrote and recorded the song in the attic of his parent's home in Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland. A mid-tempo soul song, its lyrics detail Hozier's frustration with the Catholic Church and its stance on homosexuality.
It was released as the third single from his debut studio album Hozier. "From Eden" peaked at number two on the Irish Singles Chart and has also charted in Belgium. The video depicts two outlaws who take care of an abandoned boy, and features actress Katie McGrath.
The female character on this track is portaged by Hozier as a lover with a mean tongue. He told The Cut: "There's probably a lot of Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man in that song. I suppose it's about feeling liberation... and a woman whose references might be questionable at best."
This acoustic adventure was inspired by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney and his series of poems about the northern Irish bog, in which the land itself seems to come alive. The singer told MTV News the song is about "somebody digging somebody up from the earth and falling in love with them."
When Hozier's "Arsonist's Lullabye" played in the March 6 episode of AMC's hit The Walking Dead, it quickly grabbed the attention of viewers with smartphones, who took to the music identification app Shazam to discover what song was emanating from their TVs. In fact, so many people used the app to find out the song's title that, according to Shazam, it broke an app-wide record for most tags for a TV song synch: more than 195,000 individual global queries for the tune during and after the episode aired.
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“Better Love” takes inspiration from the film’s central love story between Tarzan and Jane, and the newly released music video weaves together intimate shots of Hozier and footage from the film.
Hozier talks about rape culture in this song. When he was asked by MTV News how important it is for him that he incorporates social issues in his music, the Irish singer replied: "The lyrics are, for me, one of the most important parts of the song, and the way I see it, whether you're talking about that type of stuff, or you're just talking about anything, either way, it is a reflection of the times and it is a reflection of what's going on now at the minute."
I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days. (The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath)
