Hozier is coming to Brazil for a concert in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Before we get to live this full immersive experience, here goes the must-know about his career.
The 2024 Lollapalooza edition was Hozier’s first time in Brazil, and it’s easy to say he got quite impressed by the audience. Newspapers like Estadão and G1 posted articles about his show, presenting it as “one of the best concerts in the entire festival”. On the occasion, the crowd sang “Cherry Wine” out loud, getting the Irish singer notably emotional. Other gems the audience could listen to were “Francesca”, “From Eden” and “Take Me to Church”, and during the latter song, he came down from the stage and got closer to the fans.
For this year’s presentations, the concerts – part of the “Unreal Unearth Tour” – will take place on May 30th, at Espaço Unimed in São Paulo, and on May 31st, at Qualistage in Rio de Janeiro. For both of the occasions, Hozier has invited a special guest: Gigi Perez – composer for “Sailor Song”, which has recently become viral on TikTok – will be responsible for heating things up before the main act hits the stage.
Do You Know Him?
Hozier – Andrew Hozier Byrne – was born on May 17th, 1990 (if not suggestive enough, he was born on a St. Patrick’s Day) in Bray, Wicklow county , Ireland. He comes from a family of artists, and his contact with music began in the early days of his life– he is the son of a blues singer and a painter, and the younger brother to a filmmaker and director.
At 15, Hozier learned – on his own – how to play the guitar and sing. In 2012, Andrew started pursuing a degree in music at Trinity College, in Dublin, but quit still in the first year to try his luck recording some of his original material. That’s when “Take Me To Church” was born, without him even knowing that it was the song that would take him to the top.
The First Steps
Andrew started working with music in 2007, when he was a backing vocalist for an Irish choir group called Anúna, with whom he performed at international tours and recorded original material.
During the time he was at Trinity College, he sang with their orchestra in a special performance of Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side Of The Moon”, that took place at Christ Church Cathedral, in Dublin. The video of his presentation on the lead-vocals for the track “Time” was posted on the internet some time later and impressed the audience, who could witness his talent even before the release of his debut material.
In September 2013, Hozier took the step that would take him higher than he could ever imagine. “Take Me To Church” was released, and before he could realize, he was already a global sensation. In 2014, the song became viral on Youtube.
Its video clip was a key factor to the song’s success. In correlation to the lyrics’ meaning, it is a strong criticism of religious hypocrisy, especially when it comes to homophobia and repression.
The song – which has already overcome 3 billion streams on Spotify and became his most listened song on the platform – gave Hozier a Grammy indication in the 2015 edition. He was nominated for the category of “Song of the Year” as well as Taylor Swift for “Shake it Off” and Sam Smith, the winner, for “Stay With Me”. On the same occasion, he made his Grammy Stage Debut, performing the nominated song “Take Me To Church” and “I Put A Spell On You”, with Annie Lennox.
The hit also resulted in what is considered to be one of his most iconic and spontaneous public appearances. With a small keyboard, a chorus and the clapping of his hands, Hozier sang “Take Me To Church” at a subway station in New York City. The video of this presentation – which also went viral – showed the world what he’s capable of – if there was still any doubt.
The Debut Self-titled Album: Hozier
Released in September 2014, the namesake piece is his first studio-recorded album. With soul, blues, indie rock and even gospel music influences, its lyrics bring up themes as love, desire, religion, social criticism and morality.
These traits were responsible for giving Hozier the second position at the Billboard 200, in addition to hitting the first place amongst the most listened songs in places such as Canada and his home country, Ireland.
Drawing inspiration from musical icons like Jeff Buckley, Nina Simone, and Leonard Cohen, the album counts with notable poetic and profound lyricism, showing a lot of his connection with literature and belief in music’s expressive power.
Walking side-by-side with the lyrics’ and sound’s authenticity, the album cover is an original painting by Raine Hozier Byrne, his mother. With lots of different textures and even a faceless portrait of Andrew himself, the artwork is an invitation and a prologue of what’s coming ahead.
The album also includes a duo with Karen Crowley, from the Irish band Wyvern Lingo. Considered to be one of the most haunting tracks in the album, “In A Week” is the thin line between love and mortality. It is an undeniable example of Hozier’s ability to fuse literary lyricism with chill and love-song-like sonority.
Some of the album’s highlight tracks are “Take Me To Church”, “Cherry Wine”, “Work Song” and “From Eden”.
The deluxe special edition, released on May 16th, 2015, counts with some extra tracks, such as “In The Woods Somewhere” and “Arsonist’s Lullaby”.
There are also some special covers recorded at a live presentation at the BBC live lounge. Some of the titles revisited by Andrew on this occasion are “Do I Wanna Know?” by Arctic Monkeys, “Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zeppelin and “Problem” by Ariana Grande.
In May 2025, Hozier celebrates his self-titled and first album’s 10th anniversary! For the commemoration, his merchandising store now counts with an anniversary vinyl edition, a cassette edition and other items like t-shirts and patches.
Wasteland, Baby!: The Second Album
Marking an important evolution and maturing in Hozier’s musical career, Wasteland, Baby! was released on March 1st, 2019. This time, Andrew could count with more expensive production and his songwriting was way more mature than on the previous album.
Some influences – like the previous soul and blues touch – still remain, but on Wasteland, Baby! the gospel presence is even stronger, since in this one, there are even more choirs and layered arrangements.
This production counts with a feature from Mavis Staples, a gospel and soul icon. Her presence gave the track “Nina Cried Power” notable authenticity for its purpose. This song was released as a main single, and it was mentioned on Barack Obama’s favorite songs playlist in 2018.
Even if some themes seen in Hozier – love, religion and apocalypse – repeat themselves in this album, Wasteland, Baby! brings them to a mature landscape when compared to their appearances before.
We can also see them being used together on the same song, like on “Shrike”, in which love is seen as a way of both escape and resistance to apocalypse chaos.
[If] it’s an absurd love song that’s about the world ending in no metaphorical way, at least make it a whistle-able tune… You get great results out of just approaching that light and dark.
–Hozier in an interview to Billboard
Hozier was already a resounding success, but Wasteland, Baby! solidified Andrew’s commercial potential. The album debuted in first place at the Billboard 200, selling over 89,000 copies in its first releasing week.
Some of its highlight tracks are “Dinner and Diatribes” – of which the video clip counts with Anya Taylor-Joy’s acting performance -, “Movement”, “Shrike” and “Almost (Sweet Music)”.
In March 2024, Hozier released a special edition of Wasteland, Baby! to celebrate its fifth anniversary. This new release counts with a commemorative vinyl and some new tracks, like the acoustic version to the track “Be”, and the unreleased “Why Would You Be Loved”.
Unreal Unearth: Unheard, Unaired, Unending
Released in August 18th 2023, Unreal Unearth draws inspiration from Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy”, specially “Dante’s Inferno”, in which each track represents one of the nine circles of Hell. Hozier follows the circles of hell’s structure in a way to assign to each song a vice or trial – “Francesa” relates to lust, “Eat Your Young” relates to greed and “Butchered Tongue” refers to violence. Besides the clear inspiration in this literary aspect, themes such as philosophy, mythology and human emotion are approached independently.
Something new about this phase’s musicality is the frequent presence of an orchestra. Also, for the first time, we witness the use of the Irish language on the lyrics and traditional Irish melodies, which we can listen to on the tracks “To Someone From A Warm Climate (Uiscefhuaraithe)”, “Butchered Tongue” and “De Selby (Part 1)”.
“It’s a very sweet landmark after 10 years of a career, and I feel very fortunate and glad that I’m still able to do this and still finding new audiences”
–Hozier said in an interview to Variety.
The album can be considered as the most experimental work from Andrew until now, since it is the first to be conceptual – or at least have a main reference – and it’s his most extense album as well. Originally released with 16 tracks, “Unreal Unearth” has been relaunched three times, with some additional tracks in each new version. They were named “Unheard”, “Unaired” and “Unending”, and this process was responsible for the addition of 10 new tracks to the original list.
Amongst the new additions was “Too Sweet”, the song that took over Tik Tok in March 2024 after becoming a lip sync trend. By April 2024, the song had already collected 200 million streams in Spotify and hit the first position at the Billboard’s Hot 100 list after three weeks since its release. The song had its debut at the top 5 in the same list.
The album has three collabs with other artists: “Damage Gets Done” with Brandi Carlile, “That You Are” with Bedouine and “Wildflower and Barley” with Allison Russell. For its highlight tracks, there are “Francesca”, “Too Sweet”, “Eat Your Young” and “I, Carion (Icarian)”.
The Collabs:
Hozier has collaborated with lots of artists along his career, and here are some of the highlights:
- “Bullseye” – Lucy Dacus
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A highlight track in Forever is a Feeling – Lucy Dacus’ most recent album -, “Bullseye” has an acoustic version recorded with only Lucy and Andrew’s voices and an acoustic guitar at the National Gallery of Ireland. They also played it at a concert in New York City, in which Hozier appeared as a surprise – even for Lucy.
- “Tell It To My Heart” – Meduza
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A significant departure from his usual style, Hozier’s collaboration with the electronic music group Meduza was released in October 2021 and hit the first position at the US Dance Chart.
- “Northern Attitude” – Noah Kahan
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Released in the extended version of Noah Kahan’s album Stick Season, “Northern Attitude” was performed live at the Railbird Festival in June 2024. The track celebrates their vocal and personal chemistry, and has overpassed 60 million streams on Spotify.
- “The Bones” – Maren Morris
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In April 2020, Global Citizen and the World Health Organization prepared a virtual concert, named “One World: Together At Home”. The event raised nearly $128 million for the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund. Hozier and Maren Morris’ “The Bones” presentation was a standout moment during the event.
Social Causes
Hozier is known for his activism in social causes, which reflects in both his art and public life. He is an activist for causes such as LGBTQIA+ rights, environmental justice, palestinian solidarity, women rights and racial equality.
Amongst his actions to support those causes was the donation of all royalties from his protest song “Jackboot Jump” to the NAACP and Black Lives Matter movement following the George Floyd protests.
Also, in 2023 he performed at the Love Rising charity festival as an act of support to the LGBTQIA+ community, as the event happened as a response to anti-drag and anti-trans legislation in Tennessee.
“In a time of political repression and suppression and fear mongering – artificially generated fear mongering and scapegoating – I feel that telling the truth of who you are, and being who you are, and standing up for that, and expressing that is a very revolutionary act. It’s an honour to be here.”
-Hozier said at the occasion.
Raise your expectations!
Through all of his career, Hozier has built a masterful live performer global reputation. Not only for his vocal techniques and complete band, his concerts are known for being full-immersive experiences and shared rituals with everyone else in the crowd. Expect nothing less in Brazil.
Do you want a spoiler? This will be the first time “Too Sweet” is played in Brazil, which marks a special treat for those who became fans after the song became a hit. For those who have been there since day 1, the classics are promised to be played, too.
Some local and cultural surprises can be expected, as well. At Lollapalooza Brazil 2024, Hozier learned a few words in Portuguese and expressed all his gratitude for the crowd’s love.
Now that you know everything about this true sound alchemist, you’re finally ready to see what he’s preparing for us in Brazil. May we all have a great time!
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The article above was edited by Marina di Bernardo Babichak.
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