If You Like Hozier, Check Out…

By Abena Oppon

Hozier (real name Andrew Hozier-Byrne) has gained a reputation for the sensuality and tenderness of his music. On songs he is wont to draw close to worshipping his partner; his first single, the viral ‘Take Me To Church’ is a dark, passionate, gospel-inspired track about the very same subject. Other hits strike a gentler, loving note, such as ‘NFWMB’ and ‘Work Song’, and others edge towards folk rock, such as ‘Be’, and ‘Francesca’. All have Hozier’s vivid and poetic lyricism front and centre, as well as sharing a sense of bluesy soul, and exhibiting the versatility of both the acoustic and electric guitar. With his lyricism, Hozier joins the long-held tradition of Irish storytelling, having been inspired by the themes and “beautiful mythology” of Irish writers such as James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, and Oscar Wilde.

Hozier has also spoken extensively of how indebted he is to African-American music, citing the genres of gospel, blues, and rock as influences alongside folk. His discography wears all of these with conviction —  for example, he recorded a choral version of ‘Eat Your Young’ in collaboration with producer Bēkon. It seems that Hozier is an artist popular with a generation who might not be familiar with the artists he is so clearly inspired by, whether that be because they have fallen out of fashion or are not part of a more modern Western cultural frame of reference. While explaining the generic foundations of an artist’s catalogue is the general purpose of my writing this column, it seems especially salient with Hozier’s inspirations and contemporaries, whose music is an artistic vessel for political praxis, and has been inspired in part by those who carried this torch before him. 

‘Nina Cried Power’, the first single from his 2018 sophomore album Wasteland, Baby, is a collaboration with gospel icon and civil rights campaigner Mavis Staples, and one of many politically charged songs in his discography. Hozier has also spoken extensively about many causes, such as climate change, colonialism, and LGBTQ+ rights. ‘Nina Cried Power’, while clearly about civil rights, has lyrics oblique enough to be applied to any number of political causes. 

So, if you like Hozier (first off, read a fellow writer’s fantastic review of his most recent record, Unreal Earth, and then) check out these recommendations below:

Nina Simone 

As Hozier so frequently credits Nina Simone as a musical influence, it would be remiss of me to not recommend her music. Profiling Simone, commonly called the “High Priestess of Soul,” is a daunting task, as her figure looms large, her iconic voice soaring into the annals of striking timelessness.

Simone started her career, despite her initial classical training and wish to be a classical pianist, playing and singing in a bar in New Jersey. As was common at the time, once she secured a record deal she began by covering the hits of other singers: her 1959 debut album Little Girl Blue features the jazz standard ‘My Baby Just Cares for Me’, and 1965’s I Put a Spell On You features a cover of ‘I Put a Spell on You’ by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, a visceral version of Jacques Brel’s ‘Ne me quitte pas’, and her most famous song, ‘Feeling Good’, which was written by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley for an English musical. If you’ve somehow never heard ‘Feeling Good’... you’ll like it if you like ‘Movement’ or ‘Run’. 

A famous quote by Simone — “as far as I’m concerned, it’s an artist’s duty to reflect the times” — is one that Hozier’s music definitely reflects. Simone was serious about politics. When talking about the time spent with her friend, the ‘Young, Gifted, and Black’ playwright Lorraine Hansberry, Simone said their conversations were ‘always Marx, Lenin and revolution’, and her music echoes this sentiment.

In 1964, after a “turbulent year” in the Civil Rights Movement, Simone penned ‘Mississippi Goddam’. On September 15th, 1963, in Birmingham Alabama, members of the KKK planted bombs in 16th Street Baptist Church that killed four young black girls. In the same year, civil rights leader Medgar Evars was shot and killed at his home in Jackson, Mississippi. The song is jumpy and restless, slowly roiling as Simone sings of a pressure-cooker nation, of how “everyone knows about Mississippi, goddamn” —  and in some versions, Simone directly indicts government officials, such as the segregationist Governor of Alabama at the time, George Wallace, and his wife Lurleen. ‘Four Women’ is another political track, an intersectional perspective on how slavery impacted the lives of several kinds of African-American women — and you might recognise the introduction as being sampled in Jay-Z’s ‘The Story of OJ’, a song which spins the sample (if in a slightly misappropriated fashion). These songs are perfect for those who like ‘Nina Cried Power’, and who want songs with more explicit and specific political context.

Another song of a similarly jazzy calibre, and whose lyrics inspired the title of ‘Nina Cried Power’, is 1965’s ‘Sinnerman’. The title is a reference to the song’s refrain of the word “power”, sung over and over again over a frantic mix of piano, percussion, and call-and-response vocals - perfect for fans of ‘Moment’s Silence (Common Tongue). ‘Sinnerman’ is yet another pre-existing song that Simone put her own spin on, with it originally being a traditional African-American spiritual that talks of rapture and damnation. While simple in lyricism, the song touches on similarly eschatological themes as ‘Eat Your Young’, which itself alludes to the gluttonous 3rd circle of Hell from Dante’s Inferno. 

Jeff Buckley

Buckley’s most famous song would be his 1994 cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’. Compared to the original version, Buckley’s take is far more passionate as it hints towards the hedonistic. Buckley himself called it a “hallelujah to the orgasm, an ode to life and love,” and his music shares with Hozier’s in this sensual aspect.

Buckley’s keening four-octave voice is similarly rich and expressive as Hozier’s, capturing a sense of depth but also one of airiness.  His stunning lyricism is also an obvious point of comparison, as he weaves vivid imagery and concrete specificity with intricate stories of love, life, and death.

The title track from Buckley’s only album, 1994’s Grace, is perfect for lovers of ‘Work Song’. The 6/8 metre gives the song an almost sleepy quality as Buckley approaches death with an embrace. On both, the love of their respective lovers allows them to accept mortality — in Hozier’s case, even allowing him to overcome it. 

‘Mojo Pin’, a song Buckley wrote after a dream, uses addiction as a metaphor for obsessed love. It flows gently in the beginning, but builds over its course to stabs of frenzied tremolo guitar and drum rolls, as Buckley begs for his lover’s cruelty. Perfect for fans of ‘Take Me to Church’ and ‘Sunlight’, the song has a wonderful sense of corporeality in its imagery: her hair is “black ribbons of coal”, his obsession like her inflicting on him “welts of scorn” and “whips of opinion”

‘Eternal Life’ is perfect for fans of the lyrical content of ‘Nina Cried Power’, or the sound of ‘Francesca’. 

Buckley twists the religious phrase “eternal life” to, rather than save, damn those who are (as said by Buckley during a live ‘monologue’ to the song) “ruining other people’s lives” for prejudicial reasons: “and as your fantasies are broken in two / did you really think this bloody road would pave the way for you?”. Buckley rages against the “racist everyman” and the “ugly gentlemen who play out their foolish games”, those who prioritise bureaucracy over justice, and co-opt religious messages of love to spout hate. 

‘Last Goodbye’ is one of Buckley’s more lyrically straightforward songs, reluctantly telling the tale of a love in its flickering embers. Fans of ‘Someone New’ would love the song’s shuffling beat and self-destructive desire for love, even when circumstances call for the relationship’s end. 

‘Vancouver’ would be perfect for fans of Hozier’s more rhythmic numbers, such as ‘Dinner and Diatribes’. ‘Vancouver’ comes from the posthumous album Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk, which was unfinished at the time of Buckley’s death in 1997. The song is truly a ‘sketch’, the lyricism incredibly opaque even for Buckley’s standards. As the album was never finished, who knows what Buckley may have done with its discordant harmonies and ghostly instrumental?

Young the Giant

Young the Giant are a five-piece alt-rock band from Irvine, California. Lead singer Sameer Gadhia has a similar voice to Hozier, although what his voice lacks in sheer power is made up for in richness and expression. The band’s most popular hit came in 2011 with ‘Cough Syrup’ from their self-titled debut album. If you like ‘Almost (Sweet Music)’, then this would be for you. The earnest lyricism of all artists featured in this edition is probably most prominent here, as Gadhia sings of ennui and dissatisfaction with one’s life. ‘Superposition’ from 2018’s Mirror Master shows how strands of vulnerability have come into their music over time, using the metaphor of quantum physics to openly sing of desiring companionship, and is perfect for fans of the sound of Hozier’s ‘Nobody’.

Although the band are based in California, their roots stretch all over the world, and their third studio album, 2016’s Home of the Strange, was inspired by the melting pot that is the USA. Dissatisfaction comes back once again on ‘Amerika’, named after Franz Kafka’s unfinished novel of the same name about the misadventures of a teenager who migrates to New York City. ‘Amerika’ is a song about becoming disillusioned with the American Dream, thus giving a more personal angle on the political. ‘Something to Believe In’ is sonically very similar to ‘No Plan’, with the pair both having killer basslines. ‘Repeat’ is a song about the flow of time and of life, and is perfect for fans of the soaring, epic feel of ‘Abstract (Psychopomp)’.

Lyrical similarity with Hozier is however most obvious on 2022’s American Bollywood, a thematic expansion of Home of the Strange. It’s a deeply narrative album told in four acts about a “multi-generational saga of the immigrant in America”, and combines imagery of sprawling landscapes on songs like ‘Wake Up’ with vulnerable moments of searching, as seen on ‘Guardian Angel’.