Sweet Music, Sweet Credit: An In-Depth Look at Hozier's Influences
When Irish-born legend Hozier’s second album, Wasteland, Baby! dropped in March of 2019, you couldn’t just hear the influences that jazz legends held over his incredibly tall head (the folk-rocker is 6’5”, give or take a heeled boot) — you could practically feel them beating you over the head with a stick. In the months that followed the album’s release, he explained the memories behind the samples, recalled the names and lyrics dropped in songs like “Nina Cried Power” and “Almost (Sweet Music),” and compiled a playlist of the tunes that most inspired him.
In revealing these foundations, Hozier separated himself from the likes of Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley (both being famous plagiarizers of black music) by not only giving credit where credit is due but also celebrating the artists that inspired him. By doing so with a reverence that is undoubtedly owed to them, Hozier puts his largely white, Gen-Z fanbase on notice that he isn’t the first, nor is he the best. His voice carries, especially right now, and it’s his responsibility to use his privilege and his carrying voice to practice the worship he preaches. And it is our responsibility — I’m looking at you, fellow white, Gen-Z members of his fanbase — to update our musical knowledge and education when presented with such a gorgeous opportunity, regardless of how much it sucks that we didn’t draw this education from the music industry centering black artists for generations before us.
Jazz isn’t just for our grandparents (it never was, but that’s a different article), gospel isn’t just for church (another one). If you can listen to and revere Hozier, you can do the same to the artists before him, as well as the protest songs, calls to action, and anthems of joy, sorrow, and hope that created him. I’ve laid out below the songs and artists he mentions by name in two of his top hits off Wasteland, Baby!
Almost (Sweet Music)
This one’s the easiest because it’s the most blatant. The second track on Wasteland, Baby! and the first single, “Almost (Sweet Music)” is an ode to music — the feeling you get when you listen to it, and how much you love it. The music video, starring most notably the dear, departed Cameron Boyce, is a “visual ode to jazz,” as Hozier described it to Rolling Stone. It shows people playing music, laughing, dancing, and generally loving each other and the life they are living. If the lyrics are any indication, Hozier generally loves his life to the following tracks:
Stella By Starlight” by Frank Sinatra
“That Was My Heart” by Ella Fitzgerald
“Sweet Jazz Music” by Jelly Roll Morton
“Dancing In The Dark” by Duke Ellington
“Let’s Get Lost” by Chet Baker
“Let The Good Times Roll” by Ray Charles
“Smoke Rings” by Sam Cooke
“Paper Doll” by the Mills Brothers
“It Don’t Mean A Thing” by Louis Armstrong
“My Foolish Heart” by Bill Evans Trio
“The Very Thought of You” by Nat King Cole
“Am I Blue” by Ray Charles
“A Love Supreme” by John Coltrane
“I Get Along Without You Very Well” by Chet Baker
“Russian Lullaby” by Ella Fitzgerald
“It’s All Alright With Me” by Ella Fitzgerald
“Night And Day” by Ella Fitzgerald
Nina Cried Power
“Nina Cried Power” is Hozier’s take on the cultural appropriation of American music, in the form of a protest anthem. It’s a lot of political punch behind one song but featured artist Mavis Staples was out there protesting in 1960, is out there protesting today, and doesn’t stumble once. She wouldn’t, though. She’s Mavis f*cking Staples.
It’s 2020. It’s time to talk about the fact that rock music is a stolen genre. Before the Beatles or Elvis, rock music was a combination of gospel-style music, call-and-response, and more aggressive blues rhythms. It started with black vocal groups, and it started getting spun on the radio by white disc jockeys. Elvis got as famous as he did because he was a white guy who sounded like a black guy – the perfect cash compromise in a wildly racist country. It’s one long process of appropriation. In “Nina Cried Power,” Hozier does his best to turn that appropriation into appreciation, crediting the legacy and result of protest as the most significant influence of them all. Take notes, 2020.
On the video for the song, Hozier wrote,
“This song was intended as a thank you note to the spirit and legacy of protest; to the artists who imbued their work with the vigour of dissent, and a reflection on the importance of that tradition in the context of the rights, and lives, we enjoy today. My hope for this video is much the same.”
Artists Mentioned:
Nina Simone
Billie Holliday
Mavis Staples
Curtis Mayfield
Pattie Labelle
John Lennon
James Brown
B.B. King
Joni Mitchell
Pete Seeger
Marvin Gaye
Bob Dylan
Woody Guthrie
What I’m trying to say is that if you were to throw out every record you own that was even influenced by a black artist — not even recorded, mixed, engineered, album art, liner notes, nothing — you would have bare shelves. You can’t love music without loving black music. You can’t learn about music without learning about black music. The history of American music is the history of Black American Music. Music is a universal language, and the fact that an entire generation may be learning about these artists (and many more) for the first time through a white Irishman is a byproduct of white supremacy. What Hozier is doing is important, but what he’s asking us as the listener is even more so. Take how much you love him, how much you connect with his songs, and do something with it. Listen to these artists and many, many others. Protest, read, sing, sign the petitions, call the senators, kick up a fuss, and have uncomfortable conversations. Cry power.