Chances are you’ve made a playlist for a girlfriend or a crush with a Hozier song on it. The Irish singer-songwriter has captured the hearts of queer women everywhere with his romantic and intense lyrics, and he knows it. Hozier recently spoke to Rolling Stone and responded to listeners calling him their “favorite lesbian” by saying, “It’s a wonderful thing.”
Hozier’s lyrics don’t just speak to the LGBTQ+ community, his videos and his actions do too. The music video for his first single “Take Me To Church” showed two gay men in love who are attacked by a mob. Hozier said he took inspiration for the video’s storyline from anti-gay violence in Russia. The year “Take Me To Church” came out, 2013, it became Spotify’s most streamed song.
Hozier’s advocacy moves beyond art: he recently performed in the Love Rising concert to protest to criminalization of public drag performances in Tennessee.
“It is alarming how much it’s changed in the last 10 years. It is truly alarming,” he told Rolling Stone. “I even think back to the Seventies or Eighties. There’s armed militias outside drag shows, in certain parts of the country. It’s terrifying. This is not just an American phenomenon. What’s hanging over that threat is a threat of an impending pogrom.”
Hozier told Rolling Stone how happy he was that lesbians identify with his music. “It’s a wonderful thing to hear. I really appreciate that. I’m glad. I take a step away from social media at times. In the same way that negative things about yourself are hard to hear, it’s hard to hear also, sometimes, the positive things that can be said about you. You scarcely believe them yourself. It’s a remarkably high standard to be held in.”
“I hope the music has space there and people find their home in it and it brings some joy,” he continued. “That’s all music has ever done for me. I’ve found myself in it. And I have found my warrant within it and a warrant for myself. In music, I have found… permission for myself to be myself, you know what I mean?”
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