Take Me to Church
"Take Me to Church" is a song by Irish singer-songwriter Hozier. It was released as his debut single on 13 September 2013, originally featuring on his extended play of the same name, before being featured as the opening track of his 2014 debut album Hozier. A struggling musician at the time of its composition, Hozier wrote and recorded the song in the attic of his parents' home in County Wicklow. A mid-tempo soul song, its lyrics use religious terminology to describe a romantic relationship in the face of Church discrimination. The song caught the attention of Rubyworks Records, where producer Rob Kirwan collaborated with Hozier on the final recording.
For the Sinéad O'Connor song, see I'm Not Bossy, I'm the Boss."Take Me to Church"
The accompanying music video premiered in September 2013, directed by Brendan Canty, Emmet O'Brien and Conal Thomson. It was shot in black-and-white and follows a romantic relationship between two men and the violent homophobic attack that followed.[4] Upon its YouTube release in September 2013, the video quickly went viral, leading to Hozier's subsequent license with Columbia Records US and Island Records UK. In 2014, the song achieved widespread global popularity, topping the charts in 12 countries and reaching the top 10 in 21 other territories. The song also received critical acclaim.
Aided by music platforms Shazam and Spotify to become a rock radio hit in the United States, the song spent 23 consecutive weeks at the top of the Hot Rock Songs chart, tied with Imagine Dragons' "Radioactive" as the longest-running number-one in its chart-history (at the time). "Take Me to Church" later crossed over to the Billboard Hot 100, where it peaked at number two in December 2014. The song was nominated for the Grammy Award for Song of the Year at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards and has been certified Diamond in the US.
Background and composition[edit]
In 2013, Hozier was a struggling musician, often seen in Dublin-area open mic nights. During this period, he penned "Take Me to Church" at his parents' home in Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland, and recorded a rough demo in their attic with a programmed backing track.[4] He wrote the song after a bad breakup,[5] as he later remarked that "the vocals were recorded in my attic at 2 o'clock in the morning. So it's a real homemade job."[6] It took him three months to write the song; only two musicians feature on the track: Hozier and drummer Fiachra Kinder.[7] The demo caught the attention of independent label Rubyworks, which paired him with producer Rob Kirwan. The song was overdubbed with live instrumentation, but the original demo vocals were kept because Kirwan found them "powerful" enough to remain.[4]
Lyrically, "Take Me to Church" is a metaphor, with the protagonist comparing his lover to religion. The song grew out of Hozier's frustration with the Catholic Church which, as somebody raised in the Protestant Quaker faith, he saw as dominating the social and political outlook of the Irish state.[8] "Growing up, I always saw the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church", Hozier said in an interview with Rolling Stone. "The history speaks for itself and I grew incredibly frustrated and angry. I essentially just put that into my words."[4]
In an interview with The Irish Times, Hozier stated that he "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."[9] The song contains sexual undertones; Hozier elaborated that "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 … the song is about asserting yourself and reclaiming your humanity through an act of love.[10]
"Take Me to Church" draws inspiration from author Christopher Hitchens and paraphrases the poet Fulke Greville's verse "Created sick, commanded to be sound".[11][12][13]
Sheet music for "Take Me to Church" shows the key of E minor, with a slow tempo of 63 beats per minute.[14]
Music video[edit]
The music video for "Take Me to Church" was made by Brendan Canty and Conal Thompson of Feel Good Lost, a small-scale Irish production company hired by Rubyworks, and was released on 25 September 2013. The video was filmed primarily in the city of Cork. According to Canty, the video was made on a budget of €1500 (equivalent to €1859 in 2023).[15][4] The story for the video came from Hozier himself, who wanted to bring attention to the repression and persecution faced by the gay community in Russia.[15][16][17]
The video features two men (played by Emmet O’Riabhaigh and Daniel Coughlan)[15] in an intimate romantic homosexual relationship. Later on, one of the men is kidnapped from his house, dragged into a forest, and violently kicked by a lynch mob.[4][16][18]