This is the title track of Eat Your Young, a three-track EP released ahead of Hozier's third album, Unreal Unearth. The record draws inspiration from Dante's Inferno, the renowned 14th century epic poem that is considered a masterpiece of Italian literature.
Dante's Inferno is the initial part of The Divine Comedy, which portrays the journey of the soul towards God in three parts. The poem begins with the recognition and denial of sin (Inferno), followed by the penitential Christian life (Purgatorio), culminating in the soul's ascent to God (Paradiso).
Dante's Inferno illustrates the descent through nine progressively severe circles of Hell, where the gravity of sins and associated punishments intensifies with each circle. They are:
1. Limbo: The first circle of Hell, reserved for the souls of those who weren't baptized or born before the advent of Christianity.
2. Lust: The second circle, reserved for the souls of the lustful.
3. Gluttony: The third circle, reserved for the souls of the gluttonous.
4. Greed: The fourth circle, reserved for the souls of the avaricious and the prodigal.
5. Anger: The fifth circle, reserved for the souls of the wrathful and the sullen.
6. Heresy: The sixth circle, reserved for the souls of the heretics.
7. Violence: The seventh circle, divided into three rings:
a. Violence against others
b. Violence against self
c. Violence against God, nature, and art
8. Fraud: The eighth circle, reserved for the souls of the fraudulent.
9. Treachery: The ninth and final circle, reserved for the souls of traitors.
"Eat Your Young" relates to the third circle, where gluttonous souls are confined in the slushy waste of their excess. Hozier describes a frenzied feast, exploring the idea of greed and excess.
During the verses, Hozier uses symbolic language to represent different forms of gluttony. They include his desire for oral sex with his love interest.
I'm starvin', darlin'
Let me put my lips to something
Let me wrap my teeth around the world
Hozier often poetically evokes imagery of oral sex in his music, and here he's gluttonous for his sweetheart.
Here, it's more about greed:
Crumbs enough for everyone
Old and young are welcome to the meal
The youngest and oldest individuals are particularly vulnerable to this particular sin. In chasing profits, anyone can become a sacrificial victim.
The strings-laden, bluesy chorus conveys Hozier's message about the gluttony of war.
Come and get some
Skinnin' the children for a war drum
Puttin' food on the table sellin' bombs and guns
It's quicker and easier to eat your young
War is highly lucrative. During wartime, we get two choices: capitalize on the atrocities committed or perpetrate them oneself to survive.
The song title suggests Jonathan Swift's 1729 satirical essay, A Modest Proposal. Swift wrote the work in a mock public-spirited way where the narrator, with intentionally grotesque arguments, recommends that Ireland's poor escape their poverty by selling their offspring to the rich, who could fatten the children before eating them.
"I don't know how intentional the reference to Jonathan Swift was in this," Hozier told Apple Music. "(That essay) is such a cultural landmark that it's just hanging in the air. I was more reflecting on what I felt now in this spirit of the times of perpetual short-term gain and a long-term blindness. The increasing levels of precarious living, poverty, job insecurity, rental crisis, property crisis, climate crisis, and a generation that's inheriting all of that and one generation that's enjoyed the spoils of it. The lyrics are direct, but the voice is playful. There's this unreliable narrator who relishes in this thing which was fun to write."
Hozier composed the song with Kendrick Lamar collaborator Daniel "Bekon" Tannenbaum, Stuart Johnson, Rappy, Valentino, Craig Balmoris, Tyler Mehlenbacher, Pete Gonzales and Chakra. Bekon contributed to eight out of the 14 tracks on Kendrick Lamar's
DAMN album. Rappy and Stuart Johnson have both worked with Rich Brian and Joji.
Hozier had never co-written with people in that way before. "To just be in a space with musicians and jam, that was how a lot of this music started [and] how these soundscapes were made,"
he told NME. "In particular with the songs [I did] with Dan Tenenbaum, Pete Gonzales and Chakra, it was like we would just jam, make noise and see what would happen. We'd record that noise and then I would take the stems away and build a song around it."
Stuart Johnson also played the drums, and Bekon the synthesizer, piano and organ.
The other musicians are:
Jordan Seigel: strings arranger
Daniel Krieger: guitar, bass
Marius Feder: synthesizer
Jason Lester directed the video, which stars Hozier and Ukrainian-American actress Ivanna Sakhno.
"I wanted to do something slightly different for this, and put together absurd little theatre piece consisting of two stages working in tandem with one another," said Hozier. "One stage, viewed by adults, on which the characters lose something as they engage with their world, and another stage, watched by children, where that which has been lost becomes visible."
"Eat Your Young" topped Billboard's Adult Alternative Airplay chart. It was Hozier's third #1 on the chart, following his one-week stay with "
Take Me to Church" and the two-week reign of "
Nina Cried Power," featuring Mavis Staples.
When Hozier first started writing
Unreal Unearth during the pandemic, he'd spent two years on his own and was sick of his own company. Itching for artistic companionship, he went to Los Angeles to hang with creatives, including Bekon.
"I thought I was gonna meet him for a cup of coffee,"
Hozier recalled to Rolling Stone of Bekon, "and then I end up in a room with a bunch of guys and he puts a mic in my hand."
A world away from his usual solitary songwriting process, this spontaneous collaboration ignited a spark that would ultimately shape the sound of
Unreal Unearth.
"It was unburdened with too much consideration," Hozier said. "Unburdened from the need for this to be the thing."
Bekon co-wrote and co-produced 10 out of the 16
Unreal Unearth tracks.
Hozier described their sessions to Grammy.com as spontaneous jams where they would "just jam, make noise and see what would happen," capturing the raw energy of collective creation.
