#UGH I love Hozier

[kitsunespawz]

1, 6, 21 for the music asks!! :D

1 - A song you like with a color in the title

RED by Survive Said the Prophet

6 - A song that makes you want to dance

Hold Me Like a Grudge by Fall Out Boy

21 - A favorite song with a persons name in the title

Francesca by Hozier

[madbard]

I just realized another reason I love Hozier’s music. It’s not just that the lyrics are complex, or the music itself is beautiful - it’s that Hozier is a musical liar.

Take Cherry Wine. This is a song about an abusive relationship, told from the perspective of someone very much in love with their abuser. Throughout the song, the narrator describes their lover’s cruelty. Lyrics like “I walk my days on a wire” and “open hand or closed fist would be fine” make the darker aspects of their relationship all too evident. At points, the song suggests that they are defending this relationship to someone else who cares about them (“it looks ugly but it’s clean. Oh mama, don’t fuss over me”) and even the more beautiful and seemingly romantic lines later in the song (“oh but she loves like sleep to the freezing”) have dark undertones (what else is sleep to the freezing but death?) Still, I often come across the song being used in a wholesome, romantic context. A lot of factors contribute to this, but I would argue that this song mainly gets mistaken for a romantic song because of how soft and gentle the music is - it presents as a sweet love song in every way except the lyrics. Even those lyrics are told through the lens of someone defending their broken and abusive relationship, deepening the lie. Our narrator wants to portray this relationship as something dark, yet also immensely beautiful and encompassing. The result is a song about the agony and pleasure of a broken relationship, disguised so well as a love song in every possible way that it gets mistaken for something romantic. (Even if you are aware of the meaning, there is still that deep urge to experience the song as something romantic. Just like the narrator, the listener is drawn in by beauty and the powerful idea of love, so much so that it can blind them to reality.)

Variations of this can be seen in Talk. In this song, the narrator makes their intentions very clear - they are sweet-talking someone in order to hide their own thoughts and desires (“I try to talk refined, for fear that you find out how I’m imagining you”). Despite knowing this, the sheer power of the lyrics (“I'd be the voice that urged Orpheus / when her body was found. / I'd be the choiceless hope in grief / that drove him underground. / I'd be the dreadful need in the devotee / that made him turn around, / and I'd be the immediate forgiveness in Eurydice”) overwhelms the listener. We know the speaker is putting on a show. We know they have ulterior motives, and likely don’t even believe what they are saying. But their words are so beautiful that we don’t care. The intense, almost mythic music in the background is so lovely and deep, it makes the lyrics seem genuine, because what lie could sound so astounding and true? In this case, the song about smoke and mirrors and empty talk becomes a love song because the narrator is just that skilled at lying.

Even songs like Too Sweet, sung by a narrator who refuses to be with someone unless they allow their standards to slide, become ‘romantic’ and ‘sweet’ to certain listeners - not because the lyrics are impenetrable, but because so many of Hozier’s narrators are unreliable. His songs spin sweet stories, lies so stunning that listeners are willing to deny what they know in order to experience the beauty of that untruth, the complexity of that space between what is real and what we want to believe.

And isn’t that more true to the experience of being a person, and loving other people, than the simple truths we often see in these types of songs?

[desertpups]

EXIT/IN, Nashville, May 12th '23

📷@catherinepowell

[olliesasimplething]

Guys I made myself fucking sad again

[lifemod17]

me at my doctor’s appointment but the disease is yearning and there’s no cure :(

I fear my yearning disease is stage 4 terminal, doctors said I was a lost cause

[abjectapathy]

[adamshallperish]

having a religious experience listening to through me (the flood) currently

[arson-09]

I just think that Wasteland, Baby! is actually one of the best albums ever!

[deprivedmusicaljunkie]

i’m sorry for slandering you, foreigner’s god. i didn’t appreciate you enough, bastard child of the album as described by your father. you went “the perfect creature rarely seen since some liar brought the thunder when the land was godless and free” and “she feels no control of her body she feels no safety in my arms i’ve no language left to say it but all i do is quake to her breaking if i try conveying the broken love i make to her” and i didn’t hear you. i apologize so sincerely. it’s not your fault that the chorus is repetitive. i’ll love you the way you deserve

[sumlaif]

ryu sunjae x im sol | if I could hold you for a minute

[lizstiel]

the thing about hozier is he captures that depraved horny pisces energy so well. sometimes you hear a lyric and it just punches a hole through your stomach because like yes. let me put my lips to something. don’t feed me i will come back. to kiss the skin that crawls from you?? jesus christ

[lynsburner]

Hi bestie 🖤

Hey uhhh Andrew, what are we?

[scrambledslut]

Unreal Unearth is literally about good omens hozier is so sick for this

[starburstfloat]

was nobody going to tell me hozier dropped another masterpiece

[nyxtheredbird]

“With you, I forget my goddess.”

He’s so hozier coded I’m gonna cry.

[abjectapathy]

📸 ruthlessimagery