In a new interview with Lewis Howes, singer Hozier spoke at length about his career so far, the challenges he faced and more. Andrew Hozier-Byrne broke out in the music sphere a decade ago with his smash hit Take Me To Church. Since then, he has minted multiple hit songs and been on top of the charts.
Take a glance at all the best bits from his recent interview here:
I had really good friends around me
“I think I think first of all, I give yourself some credit, I think, I think you I think you’ve navigated very gracefully, you know, and it’s when you’re in that situation, it is there’s something of your makeup or your ingredients just steers you hopefully in the right way. But what I will say is that I had really good eye good friends around me, you know, at a grounded sense around me, I had a very grounded upbringing. And some of this is maybe cultural and some of this personal cultural side of it at being Irish.
“Like, I was naturally suspicious of kind words being said about me or to me, you know, and at a time when especially coming to a city like this, or at a time when Yeah, that stuff the song was was making the rounds. And it was it was a it was a hit. And you get a lot of attention. And I think my natural response to that oftentimes was not suspicion necessarily, but a kind of a guarded skepticism.”
Impostor syndrome? Yeah, big time
“Maybe there was some part of me that felt like, Have I earned this? You know, did I, you know, have I been doing this for 10 years, you know, and I, I’ve been sitting, I’ve been obviously stewing over writing music. I’ve been writing songs for years at that point. I wasn’t sharing them with the world, but I’ve been writing them and to myself and for myself. And I had been for a couple of years doing an open mic stuff. Haha, working on other people’s projects. But it felt very quick and very early. So there was a impostor syndrome thing you really short Yeah, of course. Yeah. Big time. So that’s probably another thing that that. I was like, okay. Yeah, it’s, you know, maybe I felt I had more to do.”
On prioritizing art over charts
“I think there is an there is one part of you maybe that would love that. I think that as time goes on, and even then, even 10 years ago, I recognize that this and this is maybe what’s most important to me is that the music that I want to make, and the music that I feel moved to make, and does not necessarily necessarily belong in the spaces of the top 10 music that is geared towards social spaces, and hardy atmospheres, music that is like, oftentimes points towards like, an aspirational sort of whatever it is, a lot of the time it’s club life, or, or it’s, it’s music that celebrates or engages in, like a kind of a conspicuous consuming of life.”
Pandemic block
“Being creative, and creating, and my relationship with with myself was also, you know, my relationship with the work is very often dependent on my relationship with myself, you know, what do you mean by that? That it’s a thing, it’s like, whether it’s self doubt, or it’s self criticism, and an internal monologue. That is, that is largely negative. And something I took for granted my whole life. It didn’t catch up with me until a couple of years ago, when I when I realized I, I honestly felt I was never going to write another song. And really, yeah, sometimes during the pandemic, and I hit this kind of wall where I couldn’t move forward anymore. And I felt I’d written my very last song. And, and I had to come round to Okay, no, this is this is this is just it’s the same voices, but they’re just louder now because there’s nothing to distract.”
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