Hozier’s New EP to Feature ‘Nobody’s Soldier,’ ‘July’ and a Bedouine Feature, ‘That You Are’
Hozier already has a single that has been among this year’s Song of the Summer contenders, “Too Sweet,” off the “Unheard” EP that he released back in March. Now, with a second EP due out next week, could he have a Song of the Fall in store, too?
The artist announced on his social media Tuesday that his second EP of the year, “Unaired,” will be out Aug. 16. It, too, will consist of outtakes from his 2023 “Eat Your Young” album. And, as the No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 success of “Too Sweet” has proven, the reason these songs were left off the larger work had more to do with conceptual or sequencing reasons than coming up short in quality.
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Hozier did not list the contents of the forthcoming EP in his posts, nor do they appear in the pre-save links for streaming apps, but Variety can confirm that it includes three songs, “Nobody’s Soldier,” “July” and “That You Are,” the last of which includes Bedouine as a featured artist.
The singer has already given fans previews of two of the songs, live or on social media. He debuted “Nobody’s Soldier” in concert while headlining Lollapalooza in early August, and also posted 30 seconds’ worth of the studio version of the hard-rocking number. He described the tune to Parade as “an anti-war song.”
“July” is a more sensual number, and sounds like it could be a radio hit, if the title doesn’t make listeners too wistful for a summer season already on the wane. Hozier posted the first minute of the studio version on his socials on the last day of the titular month, writing, “Seemed a shame not to let folks hear this in July.”
“‘July’ is something I wrote during the pandemic,” he told Parade. “July was always the month when Ireland was supposed to open up again. So it was a song I wrote years ago. Much like a lot of the work on the record, you know? So it was a song about looking forward to something, perpetually looking ahead.”
Less is known in advance about “That You Are.” Hozier’s appreciation for that song’s featured artist, Bedouine, goes back a while, as, in Nov. 2019, he answered a fan’s question on Twitter about what he was listening to by responding, “I love ‘Bird Songs of a Killjoy’ by Bedouine.” That was the second of the three albums that the Syrian-American musician has released to date.
Hozier had teased the idea that there would be more than one EP this year in an interview with Variety back in May, in which he spoke at length about the “Unheard” EP. “I just did so much recording in that period that (‘Eat Your Young’) wouldn’t have made for a terribly cohesive album, along with being overlong,” he said then. “So the idea developed as we were getting closer to the release that, OK, you know what, there’s stuff here that I would like people to hear and the label certainly would like people to hear. And so we’ll just come back around and we’ll do a couple of EP releases, and make sense of it that way.” He said then that they were “finishing up some mixes” for the second EP.
Hozier is in the midst of a five-month American “Unreal Unearth Tour,” for which most of the dates instantly sold out upon going on sale, following on the heels of a highly successful 2023 tour. Allison Russell is opening all dates. It includes a three-night stand at L.A.’s Kia Forum Sept. 17-20 and an appearance at Tennessee’s Pilgrimage Festival Sept. 28.
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