r/Hozier • u/boy_with_bread • 13d ago
Song Discussion Song meanings (I got bored)
Angel small death- explores the toxic, intoxicating parallel between a dysfunctional, intense romantic relationship and drug addiction
Take me to church- emphasizing raw, physical, and emotional intimacy over dogmatic, condemning doctrine
Work song - death can’t take me away from love
Aryatins lullaby- embracing one's dark, destructive, or intense inner "demons" rather than trying to suppress them
Shrike- The lyrics express regret over a past relationship, where the singer feels they failed to appreciate their partner
Eat your Young- a dark, satirical commentary on societal greed, capitalism, and the exploitation of future generations by the current one
All things end- accepting the inevitable conclusion of relationships and life, transitioning from heartbreak to a sense of relief and peace
Through me- a pandemic-era reflection on finding strength and resilience amidst overwhelming grief, loss, and chaos.
Unknown- betrayal by someone trusted
Francesca- unconditional, rebellious love
Jackie and Wilson- feeling lost, lonely, and desperately idealizing a stranger or brief fling as a "cure" for oneself
Someone new- explores the fleeting, daily experience of falling in love with strangers as a form of emotional escapism and distraction from life's hardships.
To be alone- explores the intensity of finding solace and humanity in an intimate, private relationship, particularly when loving a "damaged" person in a relentless modern world,
From Eden-perhaps toxic pursuit of someone who is not entirely available or who is viewed as "pure".
In a week- something happy
Sedated- explores themes of escapism, numbness, and toxic dependency, using metaphors of addiction to describe a desperate longing for connection in a draining world.
It will come back- the inability to resist a toxic, addictive relationship, framed as a warning to a lover to not show mercy
Foreigner God- feeling like an outsider within one's own culture or relationship, grappling with distant, unfamiliar, or inherited values
Almost- describe the feeling of nostalgia and healing
Movement- soulful, metaphorical ode to admiration and the captivating power of a lover's movement, portraying them as an inspiring, almost divine, force
No plan- embraces the lack of a predetermined purpose or afterlife
Nobody- limitations of love between flawed people
As it was- a haunting, nostalgic song about returning to a love
Talk- a song about the intoxicating, irrational nature of love and the, at times, deceptive nature of romantic pursuit
Dinner- explores the frustration of enduring tedious, polite social engagements ("dinner") and harsh, critical, or boring conversations ("diatribes") while craving, instead, the company of a romantic interest
Would that I- explores the transition from past romances to a new, all-consuming love
Sunlight- explores the overwhelming, dangerous, and intoxicating nature of love, comparing a beloved to a burning, divine sun
Wasteland- love song about finding hope, intimacy, and humanity in the face of an apocalyptic, "end of the world" scenario
Anything but- deceptive, upbeat track from Unreal Unearth that explores the 8th Circle of Hell (Fraud), representing a desperate desire to create distance from a partner
First Light- symbolizing the end of a long, dark journey through hardship and personal turmoil
Abstract- a reflective song about memory, trauma, and finding gentle beauty in the inevitability of death
To someone from - explores the, intimate, and often difficult, merging of two people from vastly different backgrounds—one cold, one warm—as they build a life togethe
Butchered tongue- gut-wrenching lament exploring the violent suppression of indigenous languages and cultures
Fare well- chaotic journey toward recovery, blending the desire for personal joy with a cynical acceptance of past traumas
Empire now- explores themes of anti-colonialism, revolution, and the fall of the British Empire
July- explores themes of hope, longing, and emotional survival (COVID)
That you are - explores a deep, spiritual, and all-encompassing love that makes the mundane, modern world feel cold and isolated by comparison
Why would you be loved- explores the vulnerability, risk, and ultimate questioning of worthiness within a romantic relationship, likely in a turbulent or uncertain context.
Silence song- enjoying physical intimacy
NFWMB- portrays a relationship where the partner is a terrifying, powerful force of nature, inverting traditional protector roles
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u/No_Inspection_5556 13d ago
I would look at shrike again! The song implies the relationship was abusive and so the meaning of the song is really more nuanced.
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u/DontDreamItsOver3 12d ago
Interesting take, what lyrics in the song sound more like "abusive" to you than "neglectful", a word I think he actually uses in the song? I share OP's take that it sounds like apologizing after the fact for not showing up as he should have, maybe not valuing her enough, but very interested to hear what lyrics tell a story of abusive for you?
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u/No_Inspection_5556 12d ago
A description in the song of the relationship: “dragging along, following your form. Hung like the pelt of some prey you had worn.” When the song says they are flying like a bird back to the relationship it says “back to the hedgerows where bodies are mounted.” And then at the end it says “I was transforming by your grounded and giving and darkening scorn.” Not to mention the backdrop of the song is based on a shrike which is a bird that is completely dependent on this thorn bush which it impales its prey on. Why would their lover be a sharp thorn?
My take from these things is it’s a person at the end of their life (or the apocalypse if you take hozier’s word for the idea behind the album) looking back on this abusive relationship and realizing that they actually felt a sense of purpose and goodness in this relationship bc it was so dependent on this person. They knew their positive traits (I had no idea on what ground I was founded… then when I met you my virtues uncounted) bc this person was so specific and demanding about what they wanted. When you feel untethered it can feel grounding to have someone be controlling of you bc you know what you’re living for.
There is a sense that they just shaped to the form of their lover (hung like a pelt) and didn’t have much of an identity themselves. Then they fled the relationship without realizing the sense of purpose they would be losing (fled to the city with so much discounted). I think they’re looking back on their life reflecting on when they felt the most purposeful and are now wondering if they are actually inherently made for a relationship like that. Scorn would only be grounded and giving if it gave you a sense of the direction you should be following. It’s darkening bc it hurts, but it also provides something to live for - pleasing your partner.
So basically I personally think it’s a song about a person who left an abusive relationship but looks back on it wondering if maybe they were wrong (I couldn’t utter my love when it counted) and the way they felt so intensely for this person and had such a strong sense of purpose and identity in this person is actually what gave their life meaning, and perhaps they are just made to be dependent on their violence (shrike - thorn).
Of course people are allowed to interpret it however they want! I just think the fleeing, scorn, pelt, and shrike/thorn metaphors indicate the relationship was not the most ideal in many ways.
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u/DontDreamItsOver3 11d ago
Soooo interesting! I can see how you read it all that way. As we've already both said, there is no right or wrong interpretation. Thanks for saying how you arrived to your interpretation!
I remain still with the strong read on it that basically he was just not emotionally or maybe even physically available to this love when they were seriously in love, and that she was amazing (he spoke many times in interviews that the thorns were both necessary for the Shrike to eat, and also were protection, kept other predators away from the shrike) and I remember him using the word "home", the thorny bushes were a safe home to the shrike.
And all of his:
"I couldn't utter my love when it counted
Ah, but I'm singing like a bird 'bout it now
I couldn't whisper when you needed it shouted
Ah, but I'm singing like a bird, 'bout it now"to me sounds like the relationship is very much over, but he's looking back and realizing how badly he messed up, and wanting her to know he realizes it. Aaah he's singing like a bird about it now..."
But to me there's nothing at all that really makes it sound like SHE was bad or abusive. If he was unavailable as a lover and partner, her "darkening scorn" is very understandable. And since it was the same love he wrote NFWMB about, maybe when she really felt wronged, she told him about himself ;) So maybe a thorn scorned is a force to reckon with as the breakup is happening... In the end I mostly hear it as an "I'm sorry" and "remember me when I'm reborn and I literally can't live without your thorn".
It's fun to revisit these songs so long after WB came out and after a whole other album cycle with UU.
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u/No_Inspection_5556 11d ago
I can see it! I think the combination of thorns and violence and thorns as home/protection fits in my interpretation too. As someone with a chronically traumatized family I know what it’s like to be in controlling, damaging relationships that are also like home/safe. I think the song cherry wine is also one about similar themes of harmful relationships creating complicated feelings in the victims mind. You can be harmed by and also feel loved and safe in abusive relationships. And often the love and safety is felt in more intense ways bc the harm is intense too. So I think that’s why I read the first lines as someone looking back and thinking they didn’t appreciate the highs enough bc they were focused on the lows. And the sense that you’re coming back as a shrike feels like reckoning with the fact that maybe youre made to fit in a violent dependency bc of its safety and warmth.
I feel like hozier songs are definitely obscure enough to illicit a lot of reactions. They’re so rich and layered that it makes sense!
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u/DontDreamItsOver3 11d ago
That all makes sense when you see it the way you describe. And my first job out of college was as a domestic violence counselor, so those dynamics you describe are very familiar, especially the complexity of the emotions. Cherry Wine is unquestionably about domestic violence, that is a definite. I guess - even with agreeing that all the dynamics you describe are so real in a lot of DV relationships - I still don't get that in the end the relationship was unhealthy because of anything she was or did. It sounds to me like him taking responsibility (which I know could also be a DV dynamic) but I don't get that from the song.
I think also for me, with him as an artist, it's very hard for me to imagine he looking back on an abusive relationship where he was on the receiving end of it, and looking back and seeing it for what it was and also taking responsibility. He describes so many real, complicated relationship dynamics in so many songs, but I can't see him looking back and singing what sounds like fondly remembering and feeling bad that he was unavailable if it was abusive. But that's just me and how I hear the rest of his music.
Most importantly, I hope all is well with you and you are safe and well-cared for, which is what I hope for all of us, everyone, but we know that is not the case for everyone. Love how thoughtful your analysis of this song is!
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u/No_Inspection_5556 11d ago
I hear you! I think I’m in the same space regarding how I hear his music and projecting it onto this song! I see his music as constantly exploring complex relationship themes and engaging challenging ideas in regards to them. Many of the relationships his music explores are unconventional (NFWMB as a definite example).
I think the idea of someone at the apocalypse looking back with this clarity about their life/reconsidering ideas they once held fits the album. And the idea of someone holding this really complicated idea that yes they know the relationship had problems but what they got from it was so grounding that ultimately when they think back it was worth it - is a heart breaking reflection. To consider being made to fit such a dynamic wrecks me lol.
I think hearing the concept of their goodness being found in a person and going with that person, also “dragging along following your form, hung like the pelt of some prey you had worn.” Couldn’t describe a healthy relationship in my opinion. But being able to look back on a relationship described as that and change your mind about how it served you feels very edgy and complex in the way I would expect Hozier to explore.
I hope you’re well too! It’s fun to engage this concept and I’m glad we were able to!
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u/DontDreamItsOver3 12d ago edited 12d ago
I don't think there's any interpretations that are "wrong", because as Hozier himself says, once the songs are out there, it's for the listener to finish the interpretations. The exception maybe being when people to take it to mean something that's counter to the meaning, like all the church's that wanted to use "Take Me To Church" as a song to get more people to obey the church LOL!
I love that you did this, and wow I bow down to your ability to keep it short - I lack that ability as you're about to see :)
I pretty much agree with everything you wrote. The few songs I have a different take or at least some different angles on than you are these, but doesn't make anyone's take "wrong"....
From Eden: this isn't wildly different from what you said, but I just hear From Eden as exactly what it is and what he's said he had in mind: The Garden of Eden story from Satan/the snake's POV. And I guess with a layer of how there's no innocence anymore, no chivalry, that it all died on people's own swords. Again not that different from what you said, but it's one of the few songs I hear more literally, but yes also with a would-be lover who would hang his love interest's other lover from a tree, so sure on the toxicity part there :)
Sedated: I also take that more literally, yes club culture and popular culture in general is toxic and damaging and depressing and alienating, but your love interest shouldn't make it even more of those things. YOu're supposed to help each other, pull each other away from it. This song and Angel of Small Death feels like him singing about relationships that are literally with addicted people. Doesn't have to be his own direct experience, but not impossible that he had close friends he saw this with. And when he was growing up it was more music videos, the Real World and reality shows that were so toxic and making people more and more insecure and isolated. Now it's smart phones and social media that is doing even scarier damage. So loved ones should help pull each other out, not stand there watching the other sink deeper into the quicksand of depression, harm and addiction.
No Plan: I think that's more about facing the end of the world, literally the earth's demise ("as Mack explained, there will be darkness again") and appreciating that your lover gets that there is "no plan", it's all about just living fully in the present, there's no race to be run, no one coming to save everyone. It'll all end, so make the most of it now. (As a funny aside, around the time of WB he often wore buttons on his jacket. I once gifted him a few, knowing that he'd never wear them publicly but hoping he'd get a good laugh out of them. He did laugh! One said, per No Plan "You're secret's safe with me... because I wasn't really listening anyway" and he got a good laugh out of that one :) Another said "Sorry I missed church, I was busy practicing witchcraft and becoming a lesbian", and he loved that one too!)
Talk: Talk is ALL "unreliable narrator" to me. It's not about intoxicating anything, it's just mainly about how well someone can sound interesting and romantic and epically mythical, all just to get someone in bed. "Imagine being loved by me" is simultaneously the sexiest idea ever, and the cheesiest thing someone could say to you at a party. That's all I hear and I love it!
Wow, my full comment is too long, so this was Part 1; Part 2 in next reply...
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u/DontDreamItsOver3 12d ago edited 12d ago
This is Part 2 of my reply, because I guess I hit the length limit and it wouldn't post! Yeah, you're much better with brevity than me!
Dinner & Diatribes: I guess as with most of these songs, while I totally agree Hozier is a layered songwriter and most of his songs have all sorts of layers of meanings, in the end I mostly take the songs for what they seem to be about, although the imagery and metaphors are endlessly brilliant. To me Dinner & Diatribes is indeed (as you say) about trying to survive boring social settings, but the song is MAINLY about how sexy it is or would be to be in that setting and your lover helps you get through it by repeatedly whispering all the naughty, room-wrecking things she's going to do to you or you're both going to do, in the midst of this proper stale social situation, pretty much getting you so wound up you may not make it back to your hotel room, you might just press the emergency stop button on the elevator and do it all there LOL! So it's more about the fun and tension and anticipation and creative sexual adventures than it is about the boredom. The boredom just sets the stage for the rest to happen.
Sunlight is one of the few I disagree with you about, I don't think it focuses on the toxicity and danger of love at all. I think it focuses on the totality of love, and uses the myth of Icarus as his metaphor, like it just doesn't matter, his love is so total and complete he'd strap wings on himself and fly into the heat of the sun (yes, his lover = the sun), but the difference to me is that he is singing about how his wings would melt and he'd plunge to his death but be happy the whole way down because, wow, he loved, and was loved, and that is all that matters. He'd meet his end with joy, because of how great the love was. That's how I hear it.
Abstract: Another I have a more different take, I take him using the moment he fell in love with that love as being like literally "a deer in headlights", he knew he was a goner, and later when that love broke up with him, so the love was ending and he was that deer lying dying in the road (or whatever animal you imagine), that same love was his psychopomp, still loved him even if she couldn't be with him and literally escorted him on the ride from life to wherever he was headed in death. The world in his eyes, her eyes.... Gawd to I adore that song. So heartbreaking and relatable in so many ways! And yes definitely also about grief and the peace in death too, but all (for me) in context of falling in love and knowing it was going to do you in, and then the end coming and that love being the one to escort you lovingly into the next plane (because, I assume, they were the one to say "we're breaking up").
Fare Well: For me mostly just him saying "I'm never ok, I never fare well" which is a sad thought to feel that way but of course he expresses it with great humor.
Silence Song: Ooooh, I don't know this one, missed it! I'll have to check it out!
That's it, that was fun, and it's been awhile since I ran through so many of his songs in my head at once around meaning. Cheers!
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u/United-Education-214 11d ago
Totally agree with you on Sunlight 💯
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u/DontDreamItsOver3 11d ago
It's a great song. It's one of the very few that I love that I never got to hear live, he only played it twice live ever I think.
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u/United-Education-214 11d ago
I know. I would dearly love it if he was to bring some of these classics back
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u/DontDreamItsOver3 11d ago
Who knows - every tour he seems to keep pushing his own performance boundaries - maybe on the next tour there will be a song slot saved for rarities like Sunlight and Run and Silence Song which was on OP's list and I never heard of (I guess I'm slipping in my obsessive fandom LOL!). It's not the craziest possibility to have a rarities slot and maybe 10 songs they rotate through show to show... Here's hoping!
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u/United-Education-214 10d ago
Which is silence song? Ive never heard of it.
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u/DontDreamItsOver3 9d ago
Also check your chat requests, I had a further thought on something we were discussing :)
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u/DontDreamItsOver3 9d ago
I hadn't heard of it either. Check OP's song list, they added some songs after they first posted it, and this is one of the songs. I just figured it was released last year or something, but I haven't heard of it and haven't looked further into it yet. u/boy_with_bread Where did you find Silence Song? Can you please link to it? Thank you!
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u/boy_with_bread 9d ago
“Moments Silence.” I didn’t intend on really posting this otherwise I would’ve double checked myself lol
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u/United-Education-214 6d ago
Aaaah. This is the famous " silence song" of course. I should've read into your description of the song more . I love this track. I saw in an interview that he only wrote it because some people were misinterpreting a lyric in TMTC as a nod to oral sex. ( Something meaty for the main course) . He said he would never normally say a listeners interpretation is wrong but that was his intention for that lyric. So he said " you want a sing about oral sex. I can do that" and this is the birth of " moments silence" https://youtu.be/ISOqSMV2lBo?si=JEGm8ko-QJRpr8O4
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u/whoisaname 13d ago
Someone New - explores being so traumatized from the toxicity of a previous relationship, but still craving human connection, that you're unable to make more than a surface level connection before moving onto the next for fear of getting too close.
ETA: This is my interpretation.
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u/boy_with_bread 13d ago
If any song is incorrect let me know please! These I got from either Hozier’s explanation or Google after doing research. Sorry it’s not in alphabetical order I hope you guys like it!!