Hozier — from Wicklow to the world
'IT feels surreal to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the album that changed my life. I'm forever grateful to everyone who has been listening since the beginning.' So said Hozier on March 17th, not only the day on which Ireland commemorates its national saint but also his 35th birthday.
Surreal is right: On September 13th, 2013, Hozier released his debut single, Take Me to Church. On April 16th, 2025, the songwriter/musician was named by Time magazine as one of the year's 100 most influential people in the world. We have questions, and they include the following: How did that happen? How did a quiet-spoken teenager go from writing songs in the comfort of his County Wicklow home to effectively ripping up the rule book and securing, in pop music terms, a variant of world domination? Follow the clues, is our advice.
It started, of course, with no such ambitions. It helped that Andrew Hozier-Byrne was raised in a creative family environment, with an artist mother and a working father who dabbled in blues, gospel, and jazz music. By the age of 15, Hozier had taught himself to play the guitar, had written a few songs, and sang in his school choir. After he completed the Leaving Certificate, he went to study music education at Trinity College, missing some exams in his first year so he could record demos for a record label (Dublin-based Rubyworks, which remains his Irish record label home). 'I chose to do the recording,' he said, 'and when requesting a year's deferral was told that I hadn't really earned that right.' He recalls his brief time at TCD with fondness. 'I met some amazing people there, but yeah, I'm a university dropout.' The first clue: obstinacy, self-belief, tenacity.
His time at college wasn't fully wasted in terms of performative experience, however. While there, he was part of the Trinity Orchestra, and with them he performed at open-air festivals such as Oxegen and Electric Picnic, delivering late-morning and early-afternoon string-driven renditions of well-known songs. Eventually, original songs emerged, none more so glorious than Take Me to Church. Good though the song is, it's the video (directed on what you might call a shoeless-string budget by Irish filmmaker Brendan Canty) that equally struck a nerve. Referencing aggressive authoritarianism towards gay people in Russia through a story of lovers on the receiving end of conflict and assault, the video (which at the time of going to print had been viewed 931 million times on YouTube) quickly became a calling card for the suppressed, irrespective of sexuality. The second clue: Commitment to authentic stories, whatever the subject matter.
A full year after Take Me to Church, on September 19th, 2014, the self-titled debut album was released. Poised between acoustic folk, guitar blues, and roughhouse R&B, it didn't take long for the album to ignite. Here's where it gets interesting, however. Many artists achieve rapid, spitfire success only to stumble in the aftermath. It certainly helped that Hozier's manager (Caroline Desmond, who had been guiding/mentoring him since even before the early days of recording demos for Rubyworks) knew her way around the music industry. She is one of the great unsung female managers of recent times, renowned throughout the international music industry as someone who knows how to apply chess-game strategies to potential scenarios. The dynamic works: a very fine musician, disciplined and relentless in his search for songwriting perfection and a highly skilled tactician who doesn't suffer fools gladly in her quest for the best kind of high-profile commercial success. The third clue: Surround yourself with people who are better than you at what they do and trust them implicitly.
After four years, on September 6th, 2018, Hozier released the four-track EP Nina Cries Power, a stopgap until his second album arrived in early March 2019. Wasteland, Baby! contained songs with dystopian themes that reflected culturally and/or morally bankrupt environments. Hozier had clearly been doom-scrolling various news channels and picking up items about serious global events such as climate change, the European migrant crisis, the rise of neo-nationalism, and the consequences of Brexit. Mental anguish and fatigue, said Hozier, had indisputably seeped into the songs. Many Irish people, he noted, have a close and healthy relationship with despair, 'which is not always a bad thing. I think there are wonderful areas to explore in that. We're living in very interesting times, and in many ways, unprecedented times. Holding onto optimism, finding a silver lining or having something to hang onto, something that provides you with an amount of hope and which gives you a sense of faith in people and faith in the kindness people are capable of, is what a lot of the songs on the record were trying to reach for.' The strength of the songs was enough to satisfy the fans. The fourth clue: Create a supply and demand situation by making fans wait several years for new music (and if the songs have serious themes, then make sure they have robust and/or beautiful melodies).
What happened next wasn't a surprise. The album crashed into the US Billboard 200 chart at number one. Alongside the delight of the fans was the critical acclaim and the subsequent live shows, which proved that Hozier the performer ably matched Hozier the songwriter. It would be another four years before his third album was released, a delay imposed by the pandemic and not necessarily another supply-and-demand scheme devised by the artist/manager relationship. Unreal Unearth was released on August 18th, 2023, and if the inspiration for the album was no less than Inferno (the first part of Dante Alighieri's revered 14th-century narrative poem The Divine Comedy), then the songs hit home like darts bunched together in a bullseye. Hozier admitted the source/influence for Unreal Unearth may have gone over people's heads like fireworks on Guy Fawkes Night, but the subsequent commercial success laid to rest any accusations of creative overreach. The fifth clue: You can write songs about any arcane or academic subject under the sun or the moon, but no one cares provided you can whistle along to the melodies.
Just over 12 months ago, in April 2024, Hozier became the first Irish artist to have a number one in the US singles chart since Sinead O'Connor did the same with Nothing Compares 2 U in 1990. Hozier's Too Sweet was the song that made him the fourth Irish music act (O'Connor, U2 twice, and Gilbert O'Sullivan) to achieve this. Through a mixture of serendipity and the song's innate quality, Too Sweet gained organic (that is, not through marketing-approved planning) traction on the social media video-sharing platform TikTok. In turn, this generated further growth on Spotify and other song-streaming channels. Within weeks of release, Too Sweet had accrued over 200 million Spotify plays, so a number one spot was assured. As of writing, the song's Spotify plays are close to 1.5 billion, and Hozier's long-term presence in America is guarantee
In many ways, his success has cold-shouldered the usual applied techniques for commercial success. In an interview with the Irish Times last year, Hozier's Dublin-based label manager, Niall Muckian, outlined why archetypal marketing methods don't work when it comes to the Wicklow songwriter. 'He stays away from industry tricks. He puts his fans first. I think staying true to the fan base is the absolute number one most important thing.'
And that, readers, is clue number six.
The 10th anniversary of Hozier's debut album is celebrated with a Special Edition to be released on Friday, May 16th. Hozier plays the Main Stage, Electric Picnic, Friday, August 29th, electricpicnic.ie
See More: Andrew Hozier Byrne, Electric Picnic, Hozier, Hozier's New Album
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