Hozier
I'd love to do something with somebody like James Blake.
Things were never as exciting for me as the first gig in New York.
The more I come to L.A., the more it's amazing.
If I fall into a city, I fall into a scene, and I just don't want to get distracted and enjoy myself too much. There's too much work to be done.
A lot of the 'leave' campaign was centered around a thinly veiled xenophobia, just 'control our own borders.' It's not a good look. I don't think it represents Britain; I don't think it represents the U.K. all too well. It breaks my heart for my generation in Britain who are going to suffer.
It was amazing for me to even perform at the Grammys, but to do so alongside Annie Lennox was a truly incredible honor.
One of my biggest influences of all time would be somebody like Tom Waits. David Bowie is another huge influence. I'm also a big fan of St. Vincent and Leslie Feist.
I have very strong feelings about a lot of things. I am sometimes reluctant to come straight to the forefront with it. You know, first and foremost, I'm a musician. I'm a songwriter.
I look at all good things with a bit of a dark lens, I suppose, especially with something like love.
Someone had an eye on me as I was leaving high school. I had a chance to record demos, but they were kind of wanting to make a pop singer out of me, of the 'X Factor' variety. I didn't feel comfortable with it. I wanted to be a songwriter.
I am a politically motivated person, and that will come through in the music.
I'm not sure if every song will be 'Take Me to Church,' but I can only hope that people enjoy the body of work that I have ahead of me.
I was essentially raised on blues music. My dad was a blues musician around Dublin when I was a baby, so the only music I would listen to growing up was John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters. It's music that feels like home to me.
To be honest, the biggest reason I write music and became a musician was to create the amount of joy that I felt about music to anyone else. To me, that's a job well done.
The best vocalists I can think of are female. There is no singer I can think of who can touch Ella Fitzgerald. And when Billie Holiday sings, she's merciless about it. Her voice has just this immaculate sadness - even in happy songs, there was something that was so broken about it.
I love the sound of voices singing together, congregational singing, anything like gospel, or folk, or sea shanties. I spent quite a bit of time in choirs growing up, and in the world-touring music group, Anuna. It's a sound with very rich texture, voices singing together.
It's a very, very interesting experience to be talking to people who are such icons in their own right. When Adele came to a show, I was just talking to her, and at the time, I thought, 'I'm just having a chat with somebody.' But then I heard myself say, 'Oh, I was talking to Adele the other day,' and it's as strange as you'd imagine.
I know I'm not the kind of music that's going to have tons of screaming fans, and I'm not gonna be everyone's cup of tea. I just want to do as good a job as I can.
I'm quite sure I don't want legions of 15-year-old girls who call themselves, like, Broziers or something. My career isn't going to be that kind of a thing.
I found the experience of falling in love or being in love was a death, a death of everything. You kind of watch yourself die in a wonderful way, and you experience for the briefest moment – if you see yourself for a moment through their eyes – everything you believed about yourself gone. In a death-and-rebirth sense.Collection: Falling In Love
There is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sinCollection: Innocence
Art and music are the vehicle for the zeitgeist.Collection: Art
The song is about asserting yourself and reclaiming your humanity through an act of love.Collection: Song
I think humans are driven by othering people, by defining themselves by who they are not and who is different from them. Human beings are in love with othering.Collection: Thinking
Will there be a time when equality will exist? I think given human nature there will always be conflict.Collection: Thinking
Offer me that deathless death Good God, let me give you my life.Collection: Giving
The song, to me, is about what it is to be a human, what it is to love someone as a human being, and organizations that would undermine that, and undermine the more natural parts of being a personCollection: Song
Sexuality, and sexual orientation - regardless of orientation - is just natural. An act of sex is one of the most human things. But an organization like the church, say, through its doctrine, would undermine humanity by successfully teaching shame about sexual orientation - that it is sinful, or that it offends God. The song is about asserting yourself and reclaiming your humanity through an act of love.Collection: Song
When I write songs, I try to remove myself a little bit. Obviously they're very personal to me, but it feels easier if I feel like I'm writing characters.Collection: Song
From Eden is spoken from the Devil's point of view. I always loved in blues music how the Devil can be a character who walks and talks. So awful is your state that it seems to be a presence around you. I don't really spend time thinking about the nature of God but I'm interested in what people say about God, how it is used to control people and change policies in the physical realm.Collection: Character
I am a politically motivated person, and that will come through in the music. I'm not sure if every song will be Take Me to Church, but I can only hope that people enjoy the body of work that I have ahead of me.Collection: Song
Sexuality, and sexual orientation - regardless of orientation - is just natural. An act of sex is one of the most human things.Collection: Sex
I think if more people would understand how simple and what really feminism is, I would imagine that most men I know are feminists without verbalising or saying so.Collection: Simple
I am absolutely behind equal rights but I am also bridging the gap between cultural mentality and society's mindset as there are huge amount of gaps that need to be addressed and progress needs to be made. Yeah I am a feminist, it is not a difficult thing to explain.Collection: Rights
The church is an organisation that institutionalises an aversion to homosexuality, it institutionalises gender inequality and it speaks from a place of teaching people being ashamed of their sexuality.Collection: Teaching