Irish singer - songwriter Hozier will play in Auckland at Vector Arena, November 5.
Irish singer - songwriter Hozier will play in Auckland at Vector Arena, November 5.
A song recorded in his parents' attic shot Hozier to superstardom. He tells Chris Schulz how he's dealt with his rapid ascent.
It's only four minutes long and shot in simplistic black-and-white - but it remains one of the most brutal music videos in recent memory.
In it, a man is dragged along the ground, punched and kicked repeatedly by a masked gang of vigilantes beside a burning bonfire.
Meanwhile, his lover, another man, searches desperately, ultimately hopelessly, for him.
The soundtrack for this gut-punch of a video features a man yelping "amen" sarcastically in a tender but fiery ballad aimed squarely at the Catholic Church and its stance on homosexuality.
The clip went viral and with 215 million views on YouTube, the song Take Me To Church not only kicked off Hozier's career - it turned him into a sensation.
"I don't think I could have prepared for it," Andrew Hozier-Byrne says gently, his Irish accent making him sound sweetly sad. "It's not something you can prepare for."
Released in 2013, Take Me To Church reached No. 1 in 12 countries, earned the 25-year-old a Grammy nomination for Song of the Year, and scored him prime invitations to festivals like Glastonbury and Coachella.
Not bad for a song written in his parents' attic at 2am.
"I was excited about it," he recalls. "I remember sitting down at the piano and writing it and being proud of it, more so than other songs.
"I felt that it might connect with people but not on the scale that it did. I didn't think it would be the hit it became - I really didn't believe that. It all came as a huge surprise."
The song's success has much to do with its timely subject matter - not that Hozier will be drawn on his reasons for writing it.
Hozier was invited to festivals like Coachella (above) following the success of Take me to Church. Photo / Rich Fury
"It's not my place to tell people what is the right or wrong interpretation of it," he says. "I really think one of the important things about music and art is that it is subjective. People experience it and weigh it up against their own experiences."
For the most part, he says fans get it right: "I haven't seen any drastic misinterpretations of it."
Hozier capitalised on the song with the equally endearing single Someone New and a well-received debut album. He'll be on the road until March next year, including a New Zealand pit stop in November that he is "very much looking forward to".
The whirlwind life of a touring musician is a far cry from when Hozier was a struggling musician. Even though he'd been writing songs since he was 15, Hozier thought he had "many years of obscurity" ahead before Take Me To Church took off.
"There are a lot of years of learning how to write songs, and I did have that (but) once it started moving I was totally shocked at how fast it moved. It was very, very quick ... it felt like it just rocketed. That surprised me."
Hozier's been struggling to keep up, taking a crash course in being a professional musician: from building a reliable band and management team to entertaining bigger and bigger crowds. In his words: "I was constantly catching up with myself."
"There was a huge learning curve with live performances and stuff like that.
"I had always gigged on my own, and maybe I had a trio for a while with some very simple arrangements. When Take me to Church was released I had to put a band together very quickly with friends. The show has definitely progressed: you learn as you go, you grow tighter and more together as a band. By the time we get to New Zealand in November we'll be in good form."
Watch: Hozier -Take Me To Church
There have been temptations on the road as well. Hozier answers queries about those with this: "It's always important for me to keep a level head and keep grounded and not get distracted by some of the things on offer that come along with it."
Hozier, it seems, is still that lad sitting at a piano at 2am belting out Take Me To Church. And right now, he's trying - and mostly failing - to recreate that setting on his tour bus to work on songs for his next album.
"It's tough to find time when you're sharing space with a lot of other people. For me writing is a very solitary kind of thing that I would do best at far away with a lot of time and a lot of quiet."
And if anyone is expecting Hozier to deliver another Take Me To Church on his next album, you're out of luck.
