It’s been 10 years since he occupied charts and radio playlists with “Take me to Church”. Now he’s an author of three albums and the latest one was released on August 18, 2023. We talk with Hozier about “Unreal Unearth”, borders in art, its reception and his faith in happy ends.
I’m looking at the album cover where we can see your face covered in soil with earthworms. On the cover of “Wasteland, Baby!” you were sitting under the water. Is there something that you wouldn’t definitely do for your art? A border that you wouldn’t cross?
I can’t think about anything just yet (laughs) But I think both of those cases they weren’t too drastic. During the shoot of this cover I had a half inch of soil and when we did “Wasteland, Baby!” I was never too far under the water. I had also safety people with me. Even my pocket were filled with sand bags weights to keep me seated underwater. So I was always was very safe. But I really enjoyed doing the funny things like this. Of course it’s not that pleasant having a face buried in soil, but in the same time there was something novel about it, something fun. It’s actually the fun part of the job. It’s something you do once and you never do that again, so it’s exiting every time you do it.
If this is the fun part, what’s the worst one?
Oh, I think one of the most challenging parts of my job is lack of sleep, lack of rest with which I’m trying to function. Touring can be really challenging.
I always considered your albums as being balanced between some universal message and something very, very personal. Knowing that “Unreal Unearth” is based on Dante’s “Inferno” and the journey though nine circles of hell, how do you find it now? More personal or more universal?
There are definitely some very universal elements and I always try to keep it in my songs. What I find in it can be very intimately personal at the same time as being universal and at the same time that it’s political. What I tried to make with this album is the songs that have references somewhere in mythology or applying to what Dante’s imagined as underworld, something below the ground based in the fictional and symbolic. On the other hand they have life above ground, everyday life in the real world as well. So it was a fun challenge to do that.
What I like about the album is that when you want to dive deep into it, you got the whole universe of references, but if you don’t you still got 16 beautiful songs.
It is something I realized would be the only way forward. In the beginning it was far too close to mythology as for the purpose of a contemporary popular music. I just took a step back from that and I decided that I can pepper it with references, pepper it with imaginary. People who want to dig and be part in the pun, can dig, and people who don’t – don’t have to. On the surface these songs have their life above the ground in the real world. All those references is like life below the ground, in the fictional world.
Where did you start the process of creating “Unreal Unearth”? Just writing songs or reading Dante’s?
I came off the road in December 2019 with ideas for songs and by the time February and March 2020 rolled around, I had already some ideas. At this time I started to read Dante’s. There were other song ideas growing in my mind, but with the time as my interest to the text deepend and it continued to sort of resonate with me, ideas cracked up and I started to focusing on text and its characters. As I already said, initially the songs that I wrote at that time referenced too much to the text. So there were a lot of drafts of a lot of songs that were just too close to text or stuck very rigidly to theme of underworld in a way that it was too narrow-driven to musical theater. So I just stepped of a very rigid grasp of the text and I played with the themes a bit more. I just let the songs go, trusting that they would fall to the themes, holding the influence a bit looser.
You got us used to the thought that every first single of your albums is kind of a big statement. You were talking about minorities rights in “Take me to Church” or music bringing people together to stand for their rights in “Nina Cried Power”. What do you stand for in “Eat Your Young”?
“Eat Your Young” looks at a future with no long term view. It’s the inevitable look at the extreme thing, a life being only short-term game or gain over the industry over the lives of people or the future they cannot inherit in a long term. I guess it’s this idea of selling or giving up your children’s future.
The video to it with you playing a guy who is choosing his role in life is very evocative. We can also see your role-play son who takes over the same role to his life. It reminds me of epigenetics, which says that we carry all the past memories and experiences from past generations in our cells.
Oh, I’ve never heard this interpretation before, but this is interesting one. I’m familiar with the study of epigenetics, with it’s concept and I think it’s fascinating. Scientists witnessed trauma responses in mice two or three generations ahead. I can’t say that this was an initial part of the concept of the video but this is a really valid reading. It is definitely about inheriting roles, inheriting trauma and taking on the emotional and psychic wounding of previous generations.
When you announced the information at the beginning of the year that your first single would be called “Eat Your Young”, I was reading the comments under and between all those happy and excited ones there were also those saying that this is disgusting, this is a call for abortion etc. What do you think of it? I thought that this is a bit creepy, but…
(laughs)
…you’re laughing.
Often times people need a boogieman, when they don’t have integrity or courage or guts to look at issues that don’t have easy solutions. They just want to find ways to dismiss, avoid challenging questions and find the easy answer. People often are uncomfortable in the dissonance, that throws off the way they see the world and which make the way more simple. I’ve witnessed that my work was used as an evidence to prove that I’m a satanist. That’s hilarious! It really is. I haven’t seen a much of those kind of comments thankfully, but I remember crossing one or two where people taking it as a sort of message or directive. I think that there are people who don’t understand the fundamental thing what art is and how art functions.
The album ends with “First Light”, Virgil ends his journey through hell. Do you believe in happy ends?
I don’t really (laughs). On “Unreal Unearth” for the sake of finishing the narrative I did want to conclude with an ascent. What I dislike about happy endings is that they are conclusive. And what at the end of romantic comedy breaks my heart is this idea that they lived happily ever after. That is never the case. This is where the couple is getting together is just the beginning of a challenge, beginning of the difficulty, tedious, hard days.
I don’t like that in the movies we don’t know who is doing the dishes later on.
(laughs) Exactly. The only ending we experience as far as we know is death and there’s a lot of challenge between falling in love and a happy ending. You can come on the way to some even minor katharsis for a moment. And after this, after a contraction you come back to a place of difficulty again very quickly.
What I say in “First Light”, even in the outline, is darkness always find you either way. There’s align in that songs that tries to accept that. The sun’s gonna set anyway and there’s no eternal light.
So if there are no happy endings, why do you do what you do?
It’s a kind of metaphysical kind of question. You know, the boulder’s gonna roll down the hill, but find your purpose, meaning and your contentment… Giving up or not doing it is far, far worse, that’s all I say. It’s giving in to challenge. And I also think you can cultivate the relationship with challenge and difficulty that is appreciative. I have tried recently to catch myself in the moments of challenge and in the moments of difficulty and offer gratefulness in it. And then I found that my experience in it changes.
Talking about love – our “Son of Nyx” references to Charon, the god of underworld. But Nyx had also another son – Eros. And love in your songs is never a clear-cut thing.
I think love comes hand in hand with grief and pain. To be open to love, to embrace it, you are also fully open to a great deal of grief and also other part of yourself that can be deeply vulnerable.
Ok, so let’s go back to more positive things. During the process of creation there were some things that you did for the first time, like singing in Gaelic or letting the co-writers in.
I recorded most part of the album for the first time in Los Angeles. Also we worked with the orchestra for the first time and recorded the gospel choir. And definitely the two things you just mentioned.
You are know as Mr. Independent, a bit of a control freak, so was it difficult for you to let other people into the process?
It offered me some moments of huge amount of time and space to shape what I needed the song to be. So the co-writing largely was just jamming music and chords together. It was just falling into a mode or a chord progression and creating a soundscape. I just took it and then wrote lyrics, wrote phrases over them, recorded vocals and then brought them back to the studio saying: ok, this is a shape of the song, this is what I got from that. So it was more about the general shape of the song, something that inspired me. But lyrically and vocally I wrote the songs just the same as I always have done, make sure that it made sense to me, make sure that it felt personal.
In of the interviews you said that music has its own thing that needs to be achieved. What exactly did you mean?
It’s more something that you feel during the writing process than you can explain with words. The song comes with its intention, the feeling. You can project onto that song if you want to, you can try to control and shape it, but it’s about getting out of the way of music. I guess some other artists already spoke about that and they see it the same way. So you just let the song be what it wants to be. You feel like the song has an identity, it has a feeling, a mood, attitude, even personality of itself that wants to be realized and that wants to take form. And it’s about letting that happen.
This year marks 10th year anniversary since the release of your first EP. Does it provoke you to some kind of summary, thinking where you are, where you want to be?
Not really. In some respects I really don’t know where these 10 years kinda went. It just feels like they just disappeared, but on the other hand I just feel like I’m only starting. I’ve only now gotten into a rhythm and into a step with a work! And I really hope that continues, that I feel closer to my ability to make work better, better execute it. And that I’m gonna just balance with it.
(polish version of the interview can be found here: https://kultura.onet.pl/muzyka/wywiady-i-artykuly/hozier-ciemnosc-i-tak-cie-dopadnie-wywiad/bq8few4)
Fot.: materiały prasowe
