“Through Me (The Flood)” is one part of the three-track EP released by Hozier in 2023. The song, being written during the pandemic, looks at life in a new perspective–a combination of both fragility and perseverance.
Hozier released his three-track EP, also titled ‘Eat Your Young’ on March 17, 2023. The album contains the title track, “Eat Your Young,” “All Things End,” and “Through Me (The Flood).” This is Hozier’s return to music since his 2019 work ‘Wasteland, Baby!”
On a general note, the song talks about dealing with life and what it has to throw at us. The 2019 global pandemic is a good example of how fragile the human condition is when stacked up against nature. Everyone struggled through this period and we are still living through its consequences. But humans persevered. However, the pandemic was only a microscopic catastrophe in the scale of things nature could throw at us.
Listen to “Through Me (The Flood)” by Hozier
Hozier “Through Me (The Flood)” Lyrics Review and Song Meaning
The song begins with a picture of a man swimming near the horizon. This man has done this a thousand times before. He is confident and strong. But he feels a sudden gust of wind, unnatural. This hints at a storm to come and it’s coming fast. The man ponders if he can take it on. A brief second later, he decides against it and starts swimming back to shore. Turns out he thought for a second too late. The stormy waves are chasing him and catching up to him. The man gets lifted up by the rising waves and all his courage fades away.
This scenario was the gist of the entire world’s emotions during the pandemic. At first, humans ignored it, thinking humans are too strong to be taken down by a mere virus. But the virus brought the entire world to its knees. Then, the humans gave in to the virus and took precautions.
The virus took out 6.8 million people’s lives worldwide. Just like that man on the wave, these people took on the challenge and lost.
Every time I’d burn through the world, I’d see
That the world, it burns through me
We, humans, are burning through this world. We are the anomaly on this Earth. So, when we cry out about the atrocities we face in life, it is in, fact, life screaming of atrocities we commit. When we struggle with life, it is life struggling because of us.
The world flows through us because we are what we make this world to be. It is through our perspective and brain, that we construct our reality and thus the world around us.
It is hard to imagine, just two years later, that mass graves were a thing during the pandemic. Just before the pandemic, we had funeral ceremonies for our loved ones. During the pandemic, we were not even allowed to see the bodies of our deceased family. Makes you want to appreciate the little luxuries we take for granted when things are normal.
In the fourth and final verse, Hozier tells us to try and measure the loss of a person. A whole network of people is shocked back to reality when some nobody passes away. We had close to 7 million of them during the pandemic. The whole world was shocked back to a harsh reality. We are not in charge. That father who came home from work to hold his little daughter is coming no more. The giggles of a baby who ran around the house creating havoc are no more.
Death is a surreal thing. We know it’s coming to everyone. Yet, we are so unprepared!
Let us hear what you think about this song in the comments below. Read the complete lyrics to the song on Genius.