In the stillness of the pandemic, when the world held its breath, Hozier was in his garden. His late-1700s farmhouse in the Irish countryside served as a muse in lockdown solitude, a place where he waited out the interminable interlude with books and poetry and birds.
The result is “Wildflower and Barley,” a gently grooving ode to this ambient stretch of springtime released on his “Unheard” EP in March. And it is everything his wistfully infatuated fan base could’ve dreamed.
There is a real man, a 34-year-old born Andrew John Hozier-Byrne, who lives in County Wicklow and does, in fact, happen to be bearded, long-haired and 6 feet 6 inches tall. And there is the myth his fans have made of him, the one that places him somewhere on the continuum between cottagecore woodsman and mystical deity, who at any given moment is probably reciting poetry on a rocky cliff as white-capped waves buffet the shore. This is especially true on TikTok, where his originals and covers (including one that might dignify the whole genre of drinking song) seem destined for virality.
Skip to end of carousel
End of carouselStyle is where The Washington Post covers happenings on the front lines of culture and what it all means, including the arts, media, social trends, politics and yes, fashion, all told with personality and deep reporting. For more Style stories, click here.
He’s not mad about the sun-dappled light in which he’s been cast. But he’s also not trying to revel in it. “It certainly hasn’t changed how I present myself or how I view myself,” he says. “I find it very easy to shrug off some of the more fantastical interpretations of me, but some of them I also have to laugh and be like, ‘Okay, yeah, I do live in the countryside.’”
It’s easy to see why his lilt might be misinterpreted as incantation when so much of his music is steeped in mythology. Hozier’s 2023 album, “Unreal Unearth,” is framed by “Dante’s Inferno,” with a track list referencing the 14th-century Italian poet’s descent into the layers of hell and his climb back to sunshine. As a metaphor for the pandemic, it’s pretty potent, especially with nods to great Greek figures like Icarus (“I, Carrion [Icarian]”), Charon (“Abstract [Psychopomp]”) and Kronos (“Eat Your Young”). Hozier is a student of mythology, though before learning of Greek gods, he was steeped in Irish folklore, as omnipresent in the country as its mist.
“It was always something that was accessible, and it never felt exotic,” he says. “A lot of the myths, be them old Greek myths or Irish folklore or Christian myths, a lot of the values can in some ways shape our world or the political mind or ideology of today. It’s a well that, even when you think is dried up, you can still sort of pull up a bucket.”
But that accounts for only one category of Hozier song, which can otherwise be split roughly into the buckets of political and, well, concupiscent. (Again, to his admirers’ great delight.) “Too Sweet,” the smoky, bluesy track from “Unheard” about a mismatched set of lovers — she’s a good girl, he’s a bad boy — falls into the latter category. Maybe it was his attempt to set the record straight about his apparent angelic reputation (“God sent Hozier as an apology for men,” one TikTok comment reads), though he’s notoriously tight-lipped about his personal life. Whether the track is autobiographical or not is up for debate, but its popularity isn’t: It recently became his first to hit the top of the Billboard Hot 100.
The distinction, he says, “took a moment to absorb.” He neared that height over a decade ago when his breakout single, “Take Me to Church,” peaked in the second slot.
The last song by an Irish artist to top the chart was Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” in 1990. It’s appropriate for Hozier to share that designation with her — like O’Connor, Hozier has long been vocal about issues of human rights and political protest. During a recent stop on his current “Unreal Unearth” tour, he interrupted the music to talk for several minutes about a “revolution of love, revolution of kindness and revolution of human goodwill,” the Dallas Observer reported. The exposition included thoughts on the role of protests, occupation in Ireland, apartheid in South Africa and a call for a cease-fire in Gaza.
So the March release of “Empire Now,” a song he calls a “personal reflection” on Ireland’s 100th anniversary of freedom from Britain, feels timely. “But it’s hard to find a time in the last century in which some global imperial power hasn’t been active,” he says. “It wasn’t planned to be released at this time when war is raging. You could take any time in the last hundred years and probably point to the same reality somewhere.”
Carried by a haunting twang and synthy strings, “Empire Now” is just the latest of Hozier’s canon of explicitly political songs: “Butchered Tongue” on his new album references torture practices used in colonial rule and the effects of cultural genocide, and 2018’s “Nina Cried Power” is an ode to the Black musicians who helped lead liberation movements.
His political inclinations might seem at odds with the halo-effected fan interpretation that he’s a modern fairy tale bog king, working the land and the fans’ insatiable longings.
But Hozier says reactions — all reactions — are secondary.
“I always hoped that I could just write music that … connected with me, first and foremost, and then with other people,” he says. “That to me was always the metric of a song: being honest with what your intentions are.”
Perhaps that’s Hozier’s real magic. He’s a heartthrob, a revolutionary, an escapist fantasy. He’s out on that cliff, being whatever you need him to be.
May 17 at 7:30 p.m. at Merriweather Post Pavilion, 10475 Little Patuxent Pky., Columbia, Md. merriweathermusic.com. Sold out.
