Why You So Obsessed with Me: Hozier, Lesbianism, and Finding Joy in the Midst of Chaos
About the series: “Why You So Obsessed with Me”
We all have our obsessions — that T.V. show we can’t seem to stop rewatching, that ex that still lingers in our minds even after blocking them, that fixation on a certain musician that we would do anything (anything!) for. Some are juvenile interests that make our lives more entertaining, while others can slide into dangerous territory (like that ex, for example). And when the word “obsession” gets paired with any marginalized identity, the term has an even more negative connotation — think LGBTQ+-centric fandoms or “feminine” interests. At Camp Thirlby, we want to explore these obsessions and deconstruct the concept to be a potentially liberating one, which is where our series “Why You So Obsessed with Me” comes in. To the tune of Mariah Carey’s song, Our Camp Counselors have delved into their various obsessions even more to unpack what they might mean for their lives and identities, entailing movie they can’t stop watching or their fixation with the scary, scary future. Whether it’s a method for them to grow into their obsessions or decide to leave them, these memoirs act as a shrine to the things we love, and maybe love too much.
A few years ago, my therapist informed me that I have an obsessive personality. This has manifested itself in different ways over the years — some positive, and some negative. I have to be careful when I begin to like something because my interest can very easily spiral out of control, and before I know it I’ve spent way too much time or money on something that I end up regretting later.
That being said, I like to believe that my obsession with Irish rock/folk/blues/soul musician Hozier is different. I know that you’re probably rolling your eyes right now — come on Jocelyn, that’s what they all say — but that’s why I’m writing this essay. I’ve chosen four songs that represent key aspects of my relationship with Hozier’s music, and with these songs as my baseline, I’m going to try to explain why this particular obsession is at worst harmless and at best something that brings me great joy and ultimately encourages introspection.
“From Eden” and the Importance of Feeling Understood
While not the first Hozier song that I listened to, “From Eden” was the first track that I held close. After hearing “Take Me to Church” on the radio one day in middle school, I googled Hozier, listened to the From Eden EP and was immediately hooked. I like to think of “From Eden” as the weird younger sibling of “Take Me to Church” — it incorporates religious imagery in a darkly humorous way that shocked and amazed me as a devoutly Christian thirteen-year-old, and continues to affect me now, as an eighteen year-old who is still trying to figure religion out.
“From Eden” was my secret love. I furtively downloaded it onto my iPod shuffle using an iTunes gift card, worried about what my parents would say if they caught me listening to a song that was so clearly about the devil. I couldn’t have explained it at the time, but the narrative of “wretched” yet “precious” love was something that I, as a closeted teenager, related to very deeply. I may not have really understood what Hozier was singing about, but I could feel the tension and self-doubt in his lyrics, and that’s all that mattered at the time. (The power of the “From Eden” music video featuring Katie Mcgrath, which came out at the peak of my obsession with BBC’s Merlin also can’t be overestimated, but more on that later.)
In November 2018, I revisited “From Eden” for an English class paper. This was the catalyst that kicked my love for Hozier’s music to the next level, as told by my essay:
Later in the song, the speaker once again expresses unease about his relationship, saying “there’s something broken about this / but I might be hoping about this / oh, what a sin.” He is torn between his longing for his lover and the feeling that he is tainting her blamelessness. These lines fascinate me because they contrast forbidden passion against a religious ideal of cleanliness and virtue. This is an ideal that I am continually questioning as I come to terms with my own beliefs.
I had just recently come out to my parents and friends as a lesbian, was in love with a close (straight) friend, and was also coming to terms with the fact that I didn’t really believe in God the way that my parents wanted me to. I came back to “From Eden” in order to be reminded that maybe it’s not all that bad to embrace the brokenness, and to recapture that feeling of being completely understood. This begs the question: why do I (and so many other young lesbians) feel such an affinity towards Hozier and his music? Perhaps we can address this by looking at another song.
“Work Song” and the Collective Lesbian Unconscious
This song is not only important to me personally (the lines “my baby’s sweet as can be / she gives me toothaches just from kissin’ me” are some of the most romantic lyrics ever), it also represents a rare phenomenon in the wider lesbian community: the widespread acceptance of the work of a cishet man as a touchstone. For example, since getting on Tinder last autumn, I have seen at least two profiles with something along the lines of “If she’s your gf why’s she burying me in the cold dark earth” in their bio, and when I attended a Hozier concert back in October, the energy in the audience (composed mostly of university-aged lesbians and 30-year-old men with lumberjack beards) during this song was electric. Why is this?
Well, for one thing, Hozier certainly knows his audience. He has been an outspoken opponent of institutional discrimination, especially homophobia, since the release of the “Take Me to Church” music video that catapulted him into the public sphere, and has consistently features sapphic icons (think Saoirse Ronan, Anya Taylor-Joy, and the aforementioned Katie McGrath) in his videos. However, I believe that the lesbian obsession with Hozier runs deeper than the singer’s allyship. Hozier’s songs are about making the sacred profane and the profane sacred. Take these lyrics from “Work Song” as an example:
When I was kissin' on my baby
And she'd put her love down, soft and sweet
In the low lamp light, I was free
Heaven and hell were words to me
This is a song about finding freedom in communion with another, even if it means betraying social beliefs about what is right and what is wrong. It is about the holiness of transgressing social norms. This is something that lesbians have been writing about for ages: Anne Carson’s translation of “Fragment 94” tells us that Sappho and her lover weren’t absent “from any holy place”; a century ago Amy Lowell wrote about bowing to her lover “as to a shrine”; Pat Parker’s “My Lover Is a Woman” is a four-part meditation on the power of love to provide solace from outside violence. The point is, lesbians (and other GBT people) often relate their love for each other with freedom, safety, and sanctity, which Hozier’s lyrics reflect. His self-titled album mirrors Lowell in its references to Christian imagery, while 2019’s Wasteland, Baby! is more apocalyptic in nature, paralleling Parker’s view of love as a source of, if not hope, then distraction in times of disaster.
This brings up another important question: is Hozier stealing or appropriating from LGBT folks? I don’t think so. Rather, he is putting words to something that is felt by many people, but is often only articulated by those who are forced to justify or deeply examine their love for each other. In other words, Hozier is a cishet man who has lesbian-level skill when it comes to expressing his feelings, and for that, I applaud him.
“Wasteland, Baby!”and Embracing the End of the World
I want to end with this — my favourite Hozier song. “Wasteland, Baby!” is the title track from an album that Hozier described as a set of “love songs for the end of the world,” and I’m not sure that I can say anything more meaningful than that, especially given the cataclysm that we are currently living through. Besides being incredibly poetic — the lines “When the stench of the sea and the absence of green / Are the death of all things that are seen and unseen” are beautiful enough to give me chest pains — “Wasteland, Baby!” is also refreshingly bullshit-free. It’s the perfect song to listen to when you just want to wallow in loneliness or despair about the state of the world, because it’s not so much a patronising reassurance that things will be better, but rather a call to embrace the chaos and give yourself over to disaster.
“From Eden” is my first love, and a reminder that maybe it’s good to be bad. “Work Song” is a celebration of rule-breaking, sanctuary-giving, radical love.Finally,“Wasteland, Baby!” is exactly what I (and many others) need in the terrifying mess that is the present: a chilled-out celebration of, as stated so eloquently elsewhere on the album, “The screaming, heaving fuckery of the world.”
With all of this in mind, I return to the question that has been plaguing me for awhile: has my obsession with Hozier gone too far? I don’t run (or even follow) any fan accounts, and I don’t have any Hozier merch decorating the walls of my dorm room. However, I do have “Wasteland, Baby!” lyrics permanently tattooed on my body, and I did just write nearly 1500 words trying to justify my obsession. I guess all that I can say is that Hozier’s music has helped me understand things about myself that would have taken me a long time to figure out otherwise, and to me, the happy jolt of surprise that still hits me whenever one of his songs comes up on shuffle makes it all worthwhile.
About the Author
Jocelyn Diemer (they/them) is extremely excited to be heading to the University of Victoria in the fall, where they will study writing and English literature. An eating disorder survivor, Jocelyn loves to talk and write candidly about their complicated relationship with their body. When they’re not fawning over middle-aged actresses or writing a piece of top-notch journalism for their local newspaper, Jocelyn loves to annoy their friends with niche memes and random historical facts.
