An instantly recognisable voice and stirring songcraft solidified Irish troubadour Hozier as a Grammy-nominated, award-winning multi-platinum singer and songwriter. Driven by the thought-provoking quintuple-platinum anthem, “Take Me To Church,” his self-titled full-length debut bowed at #2 on the Billboard Top 200 (the second biggest debut album of the year) and went on to achieve quadruple RIAA Platinum status. It reached number 5 in the UK charts, and enjoyed nine weeks at number 1 in his native Ireland. Indeed the album rose to number 3 in the UK ahead of his third sell-out UK tour, while both “Take Me To Church”, and his second single “Someone New”, gave the Irishman two singles in the UK Top 30 that year, “Someone New” won a BMI London award and the official video featured the acclaimed “Game of Thrones” star Natalie Dormer. Hozier’s success hasn’t been confined to the UK and US, with the album also achieving Multi-Platinum status in Belgium, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Italy, Denmark, Ireland, Russia, Sweden, Poland, Switzerland, Austria and the Netherlands. Major TV appearances have helped spread the gospel including stand-out appearances on Later with Jools, Jimmy Fallon, David Letterman, Saturday Night Live, Ellen, Jimmy Kimmel, Graham Norton. Following a year of sold out shows and festival appearances across the US, Canada, Europe and Australia. VH1 crowned Hozier “Artist of the Year,” and he received the honours “Top Rock Artist” and “Top Rock Songs” at the 2015 Billboard Music Awards. In addition, he scored nominations for “Song of the Year” at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards at which he performed alongside Annie Lennox and “Favorite Artist - Alternative Rock” at the American Music Awards. He won BBC “Song of the Year” and the coveted Ivor Novello award for “Song of The Year”.
In 2016 he released a special charity single - “Cherry Wine” - with all proceeds being donated to a series of International domestic abuse charities. The powerful accompanying video starring four time Oscar-nominated actress Saoirse Ronan, and directed by Fargo, Bad Sisters and The Handmaid’s Tale Emmy-award-winning Irish director Dearbhla Walsh, showed a moving portrayal of a woman dealing with a physically abusive relationship. In the same year he released the song “Better Love” composed especially for the movie “The Legend Of Tarzan” starring Margot Robbie and Alexander Skarsgard.
In September 2018, Hozier released the “Nina Cried Power” EP, featuring iconic soul singer Mavis Staples, as well as the legendary organist Booker T. Jones. The title single was included in Barack Obama’s favourite songs of 2018 and was nominated for ‘Best Song’ at the 2019 Ivor Novello awards.
The much anticipated follow up to Hozier’s debut album, “Wasteland, Baby!” was released to massive critical acclaim in March 2019, entering the US Billboard Top 200 Chart at #1. The album’s 14 tracks (all original Hozier compositions) marked a major development in songwriting and subject matter. The most obvious is Hozier’s enlightened assessment of the global socio-political landscape. The multi-platinum selling album included the aforementioned single “Nina Cried Power” along with singles “Movement”, “Almost (Sweet music)”, and “Dinner and Diatribes” which featured “Queen’s Gambit” star Anya Taylor-Joy and was directed by Lioness, Nine Perfect Strangers and Peaky Blinders’ Anthony Byrne, who had first worked with Hozier on the “Someone New” video.
While on tour in 2019, Hozier wrote and recorded his song “Jackboot Jump” and donated all royalties to Black Lives Matter and NAACP in perpetuity. He also featured on country star Maren Morris’s hit “The Bones”, which was nominated for a CMA award.
Before returning back to Ireland for a break and to start work on his 3rd album, he launched his “Cry Power” podcast in collaboration with Global Citizen which saw Hozier speak with musicians, artists, writers and campaigners about how to take action and change the world. In 2021 Hozier’s image was featured on a limited edition run of postage stamps celebrating Glastonbury Festival’s 50th anniversary where he has performed 4 times, including twice on the iconic Pyramid stage. He called being on a national stamp one of the “greatest honours of his life.”
October 2021 saw Hozier collaborate with Italian producer/DJ trio Meduza on “Tell It To My Heart”, which had huge global success, with more than 232 million streams on Spotify to date, exposing him to a new audience.
In 2022, he released “Swan Upon Leda”, written while the landmark Roe v. Wade case was being overturned in the US. Because the song spoke about women’s rights, he decided to make donations to various organisations working toward ensuring all women can gain safe access to reproductive healthcare and civil rights (Mayday, AidAccess, Plan C and Amnesty International).
Also in 2022, Hozier teamed up with God of War: Ragnarok’s composer, Bear McCreary to write the song “Blood Upon The Snow”, which was featured in the soundtrack for the game.
In 2023, Hozier gave a flavour of what was coming with his EP, Eat Your Young, featuring three songs including the titular lead track. This EP was inspired by the nine circles of Hell from Dante’s Inferno. Continuing with this theme came his third album “Unreal Unearth”, featuring sixteen tracks, which charted #1 in the UK, & Ireland, #3 in the Billboard Top 100 Chart, and in the Top 5 in the Netherlands, Germany and New Zealand. ‘Unreal Unearth’ featured the lead tracks “De Selby (Part 2)”, “Francesca”, & “All Things End”. Additionally, Hozier went on a sold out world tour in North America, Canada, South America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. He sold an astonishing 600,000 tickets in 2023, and 1.4 million tickets in 2024.
In October 2023, while being on the road for his “Unreal Unearth” Tour, Hozier featured on a Noah Kahan song “Northern Attitude”.
In 2024, he continued his success, releasing his second EP of this cycle, “Unheard”, featuring the track “Too Sweet”. “Too Sweet” garnered Hozier his first number one on the US Billboard Chart, (the first Irish Artist to reach that spot in 34 years), as well as number ones in the UK Singles chart, Canada Top 40, Australia, Croatia, Ecuador, Iceland, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Suriname, & Venezuela. “Too Sweet” went Platinum twice in the UK and US, 4 times in Australia, and to date has reached 1 billion streams on Spotify.
Hozier then released his third EP of this cycle, “Unaired”, which features the current new single Nobody’s Soldier. This song is his fifth consecutive #1 on AAA charts, and he was the First & Only artist to top the Pop and AAA listings with different songs.
On December 6th 2024 Hozier released “Unreal Unearth: Unending”, a cumulation of the EPs and album, thus, completing Dante’s nine circles of Hell.