Quietly and unobserved by many, Irish singer-songwriter Hozier has become one of the hottest live acts on the planet. Tickets for his December tour of the UK’s arenas sold out long ago and 2024 will bring ever-bigger gigs across North and South America, along with massive summer headline outdoor shows at home. And most impressively, he’s done it on his own terms, with vital and subversive songs that speak truth to power, take inspiration from epic poetry and feature lyrics sung in native Irish.
Ten years on from his massive debut single – a gospel-backed howl against institutional religion and LGBT+ oppression – the 33-year-old’s new album is connecting with audiences everywhere . It’s not a “pandemic album”, he emphasises, but it was forged in the fires of lockdown isolation, collective grief and the unravelling of relationships which couldn’t survive a
