You can rely on Hozier to bring something new. Away from the usual musical standard of drugs, girls, and money, Hozier brings us a fresh perspective on life on “Eat Your Young.” The song touches on different ways the current society lives a carefree life, indulging in all the luxuries the world has to offer, without realizing that we are consuming the future of our future generations.
Hozier released his three-track EP, also titled ‘Eat Your Young’ on March 17, 2023. The album contains the title track, “All Things End,” and “Through Me (The Flood).” This is Hozier’s return to music since his 2019 work ‘Wasteland, Baby!”
In “Eat Your Young,” Hozier focuses on one (or maybe two) of the Seven Deadly Sins–gluttony and lust. While the song metaphors gluttony in the form of an actual feast, the concept applies to a wider range of destructive consumption patterns in the world. For the past two hundred years or so, the world has been treading on a destructive path only focusing on maximizing current consumption. Earning more money and spending it on today’s luxury has been the lifestyle pattern for decades now. In this process, the current generation destroys the future generations by starving them of resources.
Listen to “Eat Your Young” by Hozier
Hozier “Eat Your Young” Lyrics Meaning and Song Review
In the song, Hozier narrates the scenario in a typical household. The two partners are living a life of carefree luxury. How do we know this? By the emphasis on the fact that this couple is driven by their next big activity for the day–dinner. They just had lunch and they are already craving dinner.
Hozier never fails to wrap sexual themes into other topics. He sings that he wants to put his lips on more food. But this also insinuates his lust for his partner. This idea covers the topic of ‘Lust’ from the Seven Deadly Sins.
Let me wrap my teeth around the world
As mentioned above, this song is not merely about eating food. It is about eating the world altogether. Humans’ destructive consumer patterns emerged over the past two hundred years or so, especially with the Industrial Revolution that began around 1760. Industrialization of the world went on to the fifth gear and there was no care for what would happen in the year 2023. So, now, we are reaping its yield in the form of global warming, melting ice caps swallowing countries, overpopulation leading to starvation, disease, natural disasters, air pollution, and twenty more things.
While these destructive consumption patterns have decreased significantly in the recent past, irreversible damage may have already been made. And the destruction still continues in some form and scale. These people are quite literally eating their offspring.
In the lyrics, Hozier admits that there’s money to be made everywhere if you dare. Even today, many natural resources are blatantly being exploited for personal gain. Money has become such an integral part of everyone’s lives, most will do almost anything to secure it. People will race through all the Seven Deadly Sins in a day if there’s money to be made. Hozier also confesses that if someone hesitates to exploit these opportunities, there are one hundred more lined up to take up the spot. So, it might seem that slow and steady, humans are destined to doom.
What happens when the consequences come? In a Biblical sense, the great cleansing comes in the form of a great flood that engulfs the world, drowning sinners and saving those who can build a boat in time. In the song, the couple has a rather jestful solution for this. They will just pull up a ladder and climb a little higher away from the water. While amusing, this line represents how carefree we commit most of these sins. Most do not even bother to evaluate the consequences of the atrocities they commit. ‘You burn in hell after you die? Well, you gotta live first, right?’
Seven new ways that you can eat your young
The above lyric is a mock of the clickbait media that eats our brain day in and day out. Every headline has to be ‘brand new,’ ‘improved,’ once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,’ ‘never before seen,’ and ‘don’t miss this’ type. But in reality, the actual content is promoting consumerism, greed, gluttony, lust, wrath, envy, and all other sins. The clever use of the word ‘Seven’ also insinuates to us that all Seven Deadly Sins are hand-packed in this media propaganda.
In the second verse of the song, Hozier comes back to a sexual theme saying how the two partners lust at each other’s bodies and let this drive them. Passion should be fine. Lust is a different emotion.
Hozier also hints at the inequalities of resource distribution and consumption in the world. People who have it all, live like kings and queens, and the rest has to rely on these people’s kindness to feed themselves. Don’t worry, everyone gets enough crumbs just to keep them living so that they keep coming back for more crumbs so that the kings and queens can actually feel like royalty and pretend to wash away their sins by giving to the poor.
Let us hear what you think about this song in the comments below. Read the complete lyrics to the song on Genius.
