With His No. 1 Smash ‘Too Sweet,’ Hozier Went From Literary-Minded Album Artist to Pop Idol

variety.com:

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Victory was sweet — definitely not too sweet — when it came to Hozier staking out a place at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 this year.

Not everyone would have seen it coming, to say the least. The Irish singer-songwriter had not even had a song crack the top 30 in the decade since his breakout single, “Take Me to Church,” peaked at No.

2. And then “Too Sweet” seemed to have been more or less picked off the discards pile, arriving on a March EP (“Unheard”) that collected a handful of songs considered for but not used on Hozier’s 2023 album (“Unreal Unearth”).

But what seemed like a longshot on paper was a sure shot once the world heard that fuzzy opening lick, let alone got into the grist of his amusing tale of mismatched lovers. “I’ve always thought of him as an album artist first,” admits Betsy Whitney, Columbia Records’ VP of marketing, who’s worked with the artist from his first record.