Hozier’s Waffling of Faith in Take Me To Church

Switched on Pop

Vox Media Podcast Network

Music Interviews, Music History, Music, Music Commentary

4.6 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 April 2015

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Written in the Hozier family basement, Take Me To Church has risen up to be one of the biggest pop hits of the year. But this is not a typical pop song. The unsettling music and provocative lyrics about faith and relationships irk many listeners. But this marriage of form and content also strikes a chord with our own foibles of faith. FEATURING Hozier – Take Me to Church Wintley Phipps – Amen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Switched on Pop Singles where we investigate the mechanics behind one pop
0:18.5	smash and show you how it works and why you love it.
0:21.8	I'm your host, Charlie Harding, and I'm Nate Sloan, and today we are going to tackle
0:27.7	Take Me to Church by the mysterious Irish folk singer, Hozier... Hozier... Hoziery.
0:37.1	Hoziery, it's Hoziery. Must be.
0:57.7	Every Sunday's getting more bleep, the fresh boys are neat.
1:02.8	So I have to admit, when I first heard this song, I waffled back and forth.
1:07.1	I heard it on... I think it was on SNL.
1:10.3	He gets up there, and he goes back and forth with me.
1:13.6	He's like minor and major chords.
1:15.6	I thought this is not a normal pop song.
1:18.3	No, and lyrically there's a lot of waffling between light and dark truth and lives.
1:26.6	What is this song all about?
1:28.6	Oh, man. Oh, that's... It's deep, right?
1:33.6	It's deep. I mean, it's definitely the kind of thing you think about a lot when you're
1:38.3	22 years old. What were you thinking about it, 22?
1:43.3	What is organized religion? What is truth? What do we... the hypocrisy of what we do in
1:48.8	the name of the church? I mean, I don't have the answer key for the cryptic lyrics of
1:56.2	this song. I think they're intentionally vague, which is cool.
2:01.1	And it's fascinating that this is a chart-topper, this very rich and phantasmagoric imagery
2:10.9	that this song is up there with Taylor Swift's Shake It Off is a really... is a testament
2:16.1	to the diversity of our musical taste still in 2015.
	...

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