submissions
| Hozier – Jackie and Wilson Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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@[teaspill:2297] Thaaaaat's Hozier! The depressing is always underneath . . . Someday I hope he'll explain the appeal of the Isis-Oriris story to him, given that it's the only interpretation I can come up with for Run. |
submissions
| Hozier – Angel of Small Death & the Codeine Scene Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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@[teaspill:1752] Thanks for that--once again, very helpful. I haven't deconstructed a piece of popular music in quite some time--haven't found many that need or inspire the kind of deconstruction that Hozier does!
So perhaps the way to interpret this is that she’s not the Angel of Small Death AND the Codeine Scene, she’s the Angel of Small Death (heroin), and she hangs around the codeine scene looking for new conquests. It’s not a compound attribute, it’s where she finds new conquests. |
submissions
| Hozier – Foreigner's God Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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This song tears my heart out. I love it. I’ve never seen a discussion by Hozier of what he was thinking when he was writing it, but a story always arises in my mind when I listen. It seems to be an exploration of the enslavement of women from the point of view of a man perceptive enough to question what he is doing and be troubled when the slave he is committing whatever you call a sexual act committed on a slave screams the name of the god of her people, lost to her. She seems to have come from a country the man despises, and yet she fascinates him. It could be an ancient story from any of thousands of years in our troubled past or it could be about a slaveholder in the American South or it could be a story of contemporary slavery. What an idea! Once again he has flipped the story to explore it from an unexpected point of view. |
submissions
| Hozier – Arsonist's Lullaby Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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This is the song that takes me to church. It brings me to a zen-like state and then, as I continue to push repeat, to tears. It is a revelation. Hozier is talking about the soul. How can this child know so much? This is the bookend to Take Me To Church. Once again he is examining original sin but this time more broadly, as in the knowledge of good and evil. We are instructed by church and parents and schools and other authorities that we must destroy or constrain or deny our “evil” parts in order to become good. No, he tells us. You must learn to keep your demons from destroying you, but you must keep them. They are part of you. Your soul needs to integrate its parts, not pick and choose which to keep and which to throw out. The conflagration of these elements is what makes you human, creative, powerful, productive, self-possessed. When he speaks of the ashes in his wake . . . the ashes are his songs. |
submissions
| Hozier – Angel of Small Death & the Codeine Scene Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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@[teaspill:1741] This makes tremendous sense as a story song rather than a metaphor song, and once again I thank you for illuminating it. The punctuation is a help too as I downloaded the album and don't have the liner notes. The various attempts at transcription I've seen leave lots to be desired. One question for you, if you don't mind . . . could you talk a bit about the title? I was misled by an image that sounds like a prostitute or a promiscuous girl who frequents the codeine scene; how do you translate it to heroin?
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submissions
| Hozier – Take Me to Church Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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@[music_is_my_life_201010:1735] I suspect he's not conflicted at all. That passion is anger in the cause of human rights. |
submissions
| Hozier – Like Real People Do Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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Hozier has spoken of his love of folk and fairy tales, and this feels like an exploration of some common folk themes to me. Many ballads and folk songs describe the daemon lover, the unquiet grave, the living lover pining for one kiss from the lost even while knowing that kiss would be fatal. Over the years folk songs morph in many ways, with a ballad's details chopped off or a single beautiful verse or image becoming a song of its own. This feels like that to me. You're not sure which ballad this came from because only the bones of the story remain attached to the achingly beautiful plea for a kiss from a ghost. An interesting twist is that the living lover, perhaps out of extreme loneliness, seems to have exhumed a stranger. Or it could also be the sad situation that the dead lover has only the vaguest memory of life. The stories that could be woven from this lyric are endless. |
submissions
| Hozier – From Eden Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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@[clara10155:1731] It means the same in English, although we don't use it much any more. You'll find Strand Streets in many seaside towns. |
submissions
| Hozier – Work Song Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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This is a whole lot easier than you're making it, guys, especially if you know a little music history. Remember Hozier's background in traditional music--blues and folk songs? Work Song is . . . a work song, a traditional form. It's Hozier's take on the chants and songs used by slaves or prisoners, usually black, in the American South. Similar chants and songs were used by sailors, railroad workers and others who had to do physical labor as a team. The regular, pounding rhythm is the cadence used to keep everybody together as they break rocks on the chain gang, drive railroad stakes, chop cotton, heave anchors . . . whatever the task at hand. The heartbreaking lyrics speak of longing for the woman left behind, the one who loved him despite his crimes and sins, the one he expects to return to only in death, perhaps because his sentence is for life, perhaps because he is a slave or an impressed sailor or has been transported across the sea, the fate not only of African slaves but a good many Irish and Scots who were convicted of petty crimes and sent to the colonies because their English overlords wanted their land. This experience is one of the many places African and Celtic culture intersected to create blues, gospel, jazz, rock and roll and many other popular forms. |
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