Regardless of the sexual orientation behind a relationship, it is still a relationship and still love.
— Hozier
We all run the risk of thinking that people have common sense sometimes.
I think my parents took me to see Sting when I was very, very young.
The more I come to L.A., the more it's amazing.
I will play around with an idea for a very long time until it's found it's feet and it's good enough to become a song.
I've been a total Tom Waits dork for a long, long time.
I figured the songs wouldn't make much of a splash. I didn't think 'Take Me To Church' would play on the radio or get in the charts, and I didn't think about dealing with a global audience.
There's not a lot of room for thinking in popular culture; there's not a lot of room for being conflicted.
I love a good party - but I'm not all that attracted to a celebrity lifestyle.
Especially on the road, it's very hard to find time to actually sit down and write.
I spent quite a bit of time in choirs, growing up, and in the world-touring music group Anuna.
By the time I was in my teens, I was listening to Delta blues and jazz.
It's a surreal experience filming promotion with Ryan Seacrest and meeting Top 40 pop artists.
It was a rural upbringing by the seaside. A real quiet place surrounded by fields. I had to travel into town for school and stuff like that.
I didn't even have that many close LGBT friends or anything like that, but I suppose it was growing up and becoming aware of how you are in a cultural landscape that is blatantly homophobic... you turn around and say, 'Why did I grow up in a homophobic place? Why did I grow up in a misogynistic place?'
I'm always eager to make new music.
I don't know if I'll ever get married. I have no plans to not get married.
I wish I had more time to read. I'm always traveling.
All songs, all pieces of art, reflect the world that they were made in and the values of those artists and the hopes and aspirations of the people who listen to that music and who made that music.
I love a lot of Irish folk music and Irish folk songs.
Things were never as exciting for me as the first gig in New York.
I'm an awful control freak at times when it comes to production and stuff like that.
The first time I heard Tom Waits, it was like everything just flipped. It was just this fascination with him. My cousin showed me 'Small Change,' and I just couldn't get over that this was a white guy singing.
It sounds like I'm joking when I say it, but when I wrote 'Take Me To Church' and a lot of these things, I didn't think they would be hits. I thought I was writing for a potentially smaller audience.
I was always drawn to gospel music and the roots of African-American music. It's the foundation of rock and roll.
I would love to get in trouble with the Catholic Church. I'm not religious myself, but my issue is with the organization. It's an organization of men - it's not about faith.
I find lyrics can come at any time during the day, as can music.
I love the sound of voices singing together, congregational singing, anything like gospel, or folk, or sea shanties.
I dabbled with faith, and I explored religion quite thoroughly.
I'm quite tame as touring musicians go.
There was a moment, a few weeks after I signed, that it actually hit me. I was signed to a major label.
Either somebody has equal rights, or they don't. And certainly in the Irish constitution, marriage is genderless. There's no mention of a man and a woman.
The myth of fame and the myth of success is cultivated because it is monetisable and it is profitable.
Growing up in Ireland, there are a lot of aspects of God that hang in the air. And my music reflects that.
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.
I remember one of the first albums I got was an album called 'Thin Lizzy: Live and Dangerous.'
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.
I'd love to do something with somebody like James Blake.
I remember writing lyrics for 'Take Me to Church' for a long time before I even had a song in mind for. It's not that I was trying to write that song for a year, but sometimes you just kind of collect lyrical and musical ideas and don't actually complete the song until you feel like they work together and have a home.
I had just discovered jazz, and I started singing in a kind of blues cover band at the age of 15. We called ourselves - it was a terrible name - the Blue Zoots. We couldn't actually get our hands on zoot suits, nor did we dress in blue. We did covers of Screamin' Jay Hawkins and kind of Blues Brothers repertoire stuff.
The public discourse online is not done through the polite language of debate.
I hate nightclubs, and I get fed up very quickly in crowded rooms. I enjoy being around people I know.
If I don't think something's worth saying, I don't think it's quite there, I'd rather just not say it, to be honest. In that case, I'd rather wait 'till the thought is ready, 'till I feel like I'm happy with everything.
Rarely do I finish a song lyrically before I have a musical idea there, but then again, rarely ever would I finish a song musically before starting the lyrical ideas. So a lot of the time, they come in tandem, or they just come at a glance.
I try to be happy. I try to face things without regret or make sure that I'm happy with things and leave nothing unsaid if I can.
Religion wasn't imposed on me.
The main thing is, I can't stay up late partying when I'm on tour. That's not good for my voice or my health in general.
You grow up and recognise that in an educated, secular society, there's no excuse for ignorance. You have to recognise in yourself, and challenge yourself, that if you see racism or homophobia or misogyny in a secular society, as a member of that society, you should challenge it. You owe it to the betterment of society.
The way I did the first album... the way I wrote 'Church'... was just to trust my instincts with the music and let it kind of do what it does.
I think marriage is a scary concept. It's a scary concept for anybody. I'm not sure where I sit with that.
