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I just heard Hozier’s hit single “Take Me To Church” played on KBPS. I have also heard it on KSLC and numerous times on KNRK. The song is a protest against abuse of church members by church leadership. As Hozier is Irish, he most likely had the Catholic Church in mind when he wrote the lyrics.
“Take Me To Church”
My lover’s got humour
She’s the giggle at a funeral
Knows everybody’s disapproval
I should’ve worshipped her soonerIf the heavens ever did speak
She’s the last true mouthpiece
Every Sunday’s getting more bleak
A fresh poison each week“We were born sick,” you heard them say it
My church offers no absolutes
She tells me, “Worship in the bedroom.”
The only heaven I’ll be sent to
Is when I’m alone with youI was born sick
But I love it
Command me to be well
Aaay. Amen. Amen. Amen.[Chorus 2x:]
Take me to church
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
I’ll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife
Offer me that deathless death
Good God, let me give you my lifeIf I’m a pagan of the good times
My lover’s the sunlight
To keep the Goddess on my side
She demands a sacrificeDrain the whole sea
Get something shiny
Something meaty for the main course
That’s a fine-looking high horse
What you got in the stable?
We’ve a lot of starving faithfulThat looks tasty
That looks plenty
This is hungry work[Chorus 2x:]
Take me to church
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
I’ll tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife
Offer me my deathless death
Good God, let me give you my lifeNo Masters or Kings
When the Ritual begins
There is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sinIn the madness and soil of that sad earthly scene
Only then I am human
Only then I am clean
Ooh oh. Amen. Amen. Amen.[Chorus 2x:]
Take me to church
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
I’ll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife
Offer me that deathless death
Good God, let me give you my lifeI’ve heard this song, but never really paid attention to the lyrics.
I’ll hear it differently now.
Thanks!
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’s teachings. “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.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_Me_to_Church
Homophobes will get a kick out of the video.
Nice to see you’ve finally heard a song that’s been out for nearly 2 years now. And your analysis of the song’s premise is way off.
Got one to share?
As for actually paying attention to pop, this happens all the time to people who just aren’t tuned into increasingly worthless media.
Almost nobody I know uses radio anymore. Seriously. Present company excluded.
The last 5 years have been brutal. Most stream, or use their phone.
So I enabled streaming on the net at work. Totally enough bandwidth for it.
Nobody cares what they stream.
The radios are gone, phones and tablets dominate.
18 to 30 is average age, 80 / 20 male to female.
Production is all over the map, comedy, various genres, sometimes pandora, often youtube, talk, etc. Their tastes are great, and I hear stuff I’m not familiar with all the time.
Edit: some detail. Production has a nice amp with all the right cords. Also a big screen we use for training. Sometimes they put stuff on it. Was Lewis Black last week. They get their stuff done.
The machinist actually has vinyl, and he plays some great stuff.
Many use phones, and inventory has a desktop computer on youtube 24 /7.
Zero top anything.
The R and D guy is stuck on an alt 80’s and 90’s pandora channel.
Inventory does movies a lot.
Very interesting times.
People bring collections too.
Accounting / office is amazon music, Pandora, Youtube.
Nobody streams radio at all. I heart isn’t even on the radar, but things like last.fm are.
In my home, I am the only one who uses radio, and my wife will when driving around, but that is due to it being easy. When she finally steps up to a better phone, she will use it.
People are happy, they do the work, and they laugh a lot. Fine by me.
I had never heard “Take Me To Church” until a few months ago when KNRK played it (and it played through an early 1960s vintage tube tuner that I was aligning). Truthfully, I have been going through periods where I stop paying attention to music altogether because it seems too escapist to me (it doesn’t effectively deliver enough intellectual “meat” to be satisfying to me). Then, somebody like Hozier comes along and proves me wrong.
If I am wrong about this song being a protest against the authoritarian elements of organized religion, how can one explain a lyric like “I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies.”
Song lyrics are highly interpretive.
I don’t necessarily see Alfredo’s interpretation to be “way off”.
As for not hearing a two year old song until just recently;
BFD
Which is why I put what I did. Give people freedom to setup anything and listen while working, and that’s what they did.
The diversity of it was kind of surprising, as was everybody getting along. There was a whole week of Johnny Cash a while back. Turns out a lot of younger people really like Johnny Cash. Who knew?
Listening to movies was another one I found notable.
And sometimes we think we know stuff? We don’t always know stuff.
The idea that pop is pervasive is valid, because it still is. But there are also a lot of people tuned out, doing their own thing, whatever that is too.
One aspect of this song that has mesmerized me is how popular it has become in places that one might consider deeply religious. I think that people in such places have embraced the song out of frustration with religious authority in their respective cultures, in the same way that Quebecois developed sacres, that is, religious words used as profanities. The French Canadian religious swears literally translate to “tabernacle,” “chalice,” “Calvary,” “host” (the communion cracker), etc.
In the US, one of the first radio stations to break “Take Me To Church” was in Nashville, TN.
Here is a list of some of the countries where “Take Me To Church” topped the charts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_Me_to_Church#Weekly_charts
Some of these are countries that are considered fairly religious places, such as the United States, the Dominican Republic, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Lebanon, Poland, and Spain.
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