Hozier connects Irish and Palestinian histories at sold-out New York concert

Jokes about the straight boyfriends of bisexual women attending Pride could just as easily apply to a Hozier concert, based on both the attendees and the rousing speech for inclusion and tolerance he made during his encore Tuesday night in Forest Hills, Queens. At the show, attended by The A.V. Club, LGBTQ+ rights were clearly top of mind; at one point the singer fastened a Pride flag to his mic stand. But Hozier (on tour for his 2023 album Unreal Unearth and the 2024 Unheard EP) used the subject as a jumping-off point to deliver an almost academic lecture about the history of protest movements in the United States and how they influenced similar movements in Ireland and around the world, ending with a call to end the genocide in Palestine.

Hozier spent the evening in New York casting a spell over the crowd, drawing in their attention and enthusiasm as the night wore on to achieve maximum impact for his climactic remarks. Surprisingly, he started the show with “Too Sweet,” his most recent hit, which he subsequently thanked fans for making the first number-one song of his career. He also became the first-ever artist to have four consecutive sold-out shows at New York’s historic Forest Hills Stadium. The sold-out crowd for his first show clearly enjoyed the signature songs (“Jackie & Wilson,” “Francesca”), but the relationship between artist and audience truly locked in when Hozier moved to a smaller stage to perform a perfectly-timed “Cherry Wine” solo at sunset, followed by a twilight rendition of “De Selby (Part 1).” (As the songwriter explained, the Irish Gaelic lyrics translate in part to “you come to me like nightfall.”) It should be noted that Hozier is a powerhouse vocalist with impressive range; throughout the entire set, his live vocals sounded exactly like his records, except for the moments where he went bigger and bolder.

Much has been made of the decline of concert etiquette in the post-COVID era, but this outdoor summer show was an example of a genuinely positive communal experience. Watching the general admission crowd follow the musician from one stage to another like moths to a flame or the flashlights flickering on up in the riser seats are bonuses to seeing a great performer. Even the frequent complaints about filming on phones didn’t seem like such a problem at all. It was more like seeing a group of people taking a picture of a great sunset or the full moon all at once—it’s a human instinct to try to capture something beautiful and special, even if it’s kind of ordinary. No matter if it happens during the next three nights in Forest Hills or throughout the rest of the year as Hozier continues his tour, hearing a chorus of 10,000-plus people tenderly singing along to “Cherry Wine” is singularly gorgeous, and not to be missed.

It was in this spirit of community that Hozier finished a rollicking set—multiple times naming and thanking his band members, as well as much of the crew (and even had everyone sing Happy Birthday to the head of his lighting crew)—and re-emerged for a powerful and political encore. He tracked the throughline from the fight for women’s rights to LGBTQ+ rights to the fight to end apartheid in South Africa, preaching that many civil rights movements required the global community to push back. The lengthy speech reached its peak when he condemned the violence in Rafah and called for an end to the genocide of Palestinians.

“No matter where you come from—whether you’re Palestinian, whether you’re an Israeli citizen, you’d want anybody to live in peace and security and safety. And that would mean seeing a Palestine free from occupation, a Palestine free from violence, and a Palestine free to pursue meaningful self-determination and statehood,” Hozier said, encouraging the crowd to reach out to their representatives about the issue. “As I said, I come from Ireland, Ireland has its own history with occupation, centuries and centuries now. And it was two communities coming together and saying, ‘You know what, peace is better,’ and looking at a political solution, a long-term political, peaceful solution. And that was a peace agreement that America was party to brokering as well, too, and it was a huge part of the American citizenship and the American administration was part of brokering that peace agreement, and as a result, I grew up in a peaceful Ireland.”

This was all a prologue to the Wasteland, Baby! track “Nina Cried Power,” which on that record features the singer and activist Mavis Staples. Hozier said Staples, who with her family band The Staple Singers became voices of the American civil rights movement, is an example of Irish revolutionary James Connelly’s quote that “no revolution was ever complete without its poetical expression.” Before concluding the night with his own poetical expression, he left the crowd with a call to action for “A revolution of love, a revolution of honest human witness, a revolution of kindness and radical inclusion that I think all of us would rather see in this world.”