Hozier joins Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 for a conversation around his recently released album, Unreal Unearth. Zane notes that, “It’s rare that you hear an album that can put you in this beautiful, uplifting, reflective space. It’s like no album I’ve heard in a long time.”
The two have a deep dive on Hozier’s inspiration for the album, his clever writing, how the pandemic affected the creation of this project and more. Also of note, Hozier touches on the impact of his first album including hit single, “Take Me To Church,” reflecting on the project 10 years later.
Hozier on the Themes He Explored During the Creation of His Latest Album…
I knew that there was a lot of light and shade on the record, for sure. And knew that it was going to be part of the idea of touching on these themes that are all kind of universal, like playing with this idea of circles. I knew that it was thematically going to be broad, but there’s also … Yeah, you can’t … To reckon with, it’s like any experience of falling in love, or parting ways, or reflecting upon that after the fact, or experiencing it in the moment, nothing is ever perfectly good. No moment is ever … Every experience is alive with a multitude of things.
Hozier On Channeling and Crafting the Writing for The Album…
I think I turned to it first for me. I had no idea that it would be as inspiring as it would be. I’d always wanted to go to this poem. Some part of me, as a lyricist, I suppose, had all these poems that I wanted to approach, all these classic poems.
Yeah, it is very human…
The feeling was, there was always some part of me, and this is the macabre part of me, and there’s a kind of … Even since I was a child, I just wanted to hear this long, very descriptive, very visual telling of a man walking through hell, in a very visual way. And so inventive. So there’s that part of me.
Hozier On Tragedy, Loss, and His Exploration of Poems During the Process…
There’s this one line … There’s a few lines in this poem. One, he approaches the door in hell, and there’s that, “Abandon all hope, you who enter here.” And there’s a few lines in it that resonated with me. At this time, when there was so much potential energy hanging in the air, of potential loss, we were still reckoning with … Everybody, all of us knew somebody we could lose, all of us.
One of the lines, in the earlier part of that passage, as Dante imagines it, it says above the door, “Through me, you enter into the population of loss.” And it just felt, at that time, that a lot of the great deal of the world was standing at this threshold, potentially we’re reckoning with entering into that population of loss.
And I think if you live long enough in this world, that … Look, it’s fun to play with stories about, or imaginings about hell. I don’t believe that place exists, I think it’s good that we free ourselves from it. But, I think if you live long enough in this world, you will pass through your own realm, your own little hell realm, and you’ll come out the other side. And I think all of us do that in our own ways.
Hozier on How He Establishes His Voice As A Songwriter Coming From His Long History and Lineage of Faith and of Family…
…There’s a few artists, so Seamus Heaney is poet, he talked a lot about that, this pressure of being part of a group, of representing something. But there’s a great book, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce, he goes into real depth about that. And he was growing up as a young man in the beginning of the 20th century, when Ireland was making sense of a new revolutionary identity. And also, you had this whole movement where people were reckoning with the legacy of the church, and how that had failed the people, et cetera. And he talks at length, he refers to Ireland as, “This is a nation that wants to throw nets around you, as you want to fly.” These nets of religion, religious identity, national duty, et cetera. There’s that very private little path that you walk as an artist, which is, well, where am I in all of this? Where am I in all of this world?
Hozier on the Beginnings of the Pandemic and How That Affected His Latest Work…
We had all this escapism that we were leaning into. So I had this time to read these poems, that there’s always that part of me being, I should read these. As the college dropout, the voice in my head being like, you didn’t read this. You know what I mean? Excuse my … Yeah.
Hozier on the impact of “Take Me To Church” on his career and reflecting on that 10 years later…
I think it was too heavy. I was proud of that song, and there was some part of me deep down, if I could admit this, that felt that song needed to be written and it needed to be written for me. And I was an unsigned, unknown Irish musician. I’d never sold out of Whelans, I’d never played at Whelans. You know what I mean? I was doing open mic cover songs and stuff. So to write that I imagined that it might be appreciated by a small group of people.
I think in my field or in my song tradition, there’s not a huge amount of confrontational truth telling. We’re maybe at a low ebb for that at the moment, but that’s really only maybe in my field, in my same song tradition. I think in R ‘n’ B and in hip hop is really…
Hozier on dropping out of college…
I sensed that the skills I was learning in college at the time were useful to a point, but would not help me in doing what I actually wanted to do. It was very history based, very theory based, and that was interesting, but it wasn’t aligned with what I wanted.
I also knew that there’d just been a crash, massive financial crash, so I figured I’d either be unemployable with a degree or I’ll be unemployable with the ability to maybe write some songs.
Hozier on Sinéad O’Connor…
…Going back to spirituality and the source and energy, I mean, I know from what I understand about Sinéad, she was a very, very deeply, deeply spiritual person. I’ve said this before, but I think in the sensibilities that she rattled, I don’t think there would be an allowance or license for me to write and play with the ideas and “Take Me To Church” had it not been for-[her].
I think I grew up swimming in waters that were made clearer by the work of Sinéad O’Connor.
Hozier on his life changing and discovering/finding himself…
in the quiet moments between touring, in the quiet moments between promotion or creating, I created most of this album, a great deal at the time making it was here in LA. That I have these moments that I have with my family, with my parents. I have friends at home now, I’ve watched them have kids, their first children. I’m now a godfather. Again, you get older and you realize, okay, it’s not the hit of people saying, “Oh, you’re great,” or standing in a room and people applauding you or whatever. That’s cool, that’s grand, okay, that’s fine. It is to be in step with yourself and be fulfilled, what is it to feel fulfilled and feel whole and feel connected and feel in place. And a huge part of that is community.
