‘Nobody's Soldier’ by Hozier - Lyrics & Meaning

Prior to 2024, Hozier fans had made peace with the prospect of only getting a studio album roughly once every four years. In 2014, he released his self-titled debut, and followed this up with Wasteland, Baby! in 2018, before dropping Unreal Unearth in 2023.

Just as we were reluctantly pencilling in new music for 2027, Hozier unexpecteedly unveiled his Unheard EP in March - before surprising us yet again by announcing his Unaired project. Hozier is spoiling us, and we're certainly not complaining.

Fans were particularly excited to see the inclusion of ‘Nobody's Soldier’ on the three-song tracklist, which Hozier had been teasing during his live shows. The EP arrives on August 16th, featuring ’July’ and ‘That You Are’ with Bedouine alongside ’Nobody's Soldier’.

Given the current climate, ‘Nobody's Soldier’ feels particularly relevant, with the Irish singer-songwriter never shying away from tackling political and social issues through his music.

‘Nina Cried Power’, for instance, has become synonymous with the spirit of protest, while the ’Take Me to Church’ music video railed against persecution of the gay community in Russia.

Often, at the end of his shows, Hozier delivers a rousing speech about civil rights. During Hozier's Lollapalooza 2024 set in early August, he called for a ceasefire in Gaza, and the timing of ‘Nobody's Soldier’ makes it feel aimed at this conflict in particular.

On August 19th, Hozier released the politically charged official music video for ‘Nobody's Soldier’, which features shots of the folk-leaning artist singing in-between shots of phrases linked to the anti-war message of the track, such as ‘Profit’ and ‘Collateral’.

‘Nobody's Soldier’ captures the ethereal yet emphatic ambience of Unreal Unearth stand-out, ‘De Selby (Part 2)’. Hozier's haunting, atmospheric vocals soar across an angsty, persistent drum pattern and a furious electric guitar riff, with a soulful array of choral, otherworldly backing vocals accentuating the drama of the track.

As a result, ’Nobody's Soldier’ is pervaded by a sense of defiance and resistance, with Hozier delivering the song with the necessary verve and vigour to elevate this into a battle-cry.

In the post-chorus, the instrumental is distorted in a way that mimics an alarm blaring out, as though it's alerting listeners to an impending futuristic war that requires their input.

“Running with wolves

Working my miracles

Holding my world together with a bootstring

Living the dream

Benzos and gasoline

Coffee and blue light screens till the morning”

The title and underlying message of ’Nobody's Soldier’ undoubtedly feels intended as a criticism of modern warfare, and the implication that everyone should be supporting these battles. Having said this, ‘Nobody's Soldier’ can also be interpreted as a more general objection to being in a system of oppression and destruction.

When considering Dante's Inferno, which served as the template for Unreal Unearth, it certainly seems ‘Nobody's Soldier’ was formulated as part of the ‘violence’ circle of hell. In the opening verse, Hozier viscerally describes how he feels as though he's running with wolves, creating a sense of being surrounded by those who have succumbed to the vicious mentality of the ‘system’ he finds himself in.

While there's a dystopian vibe throughout ’Nobody's Soldier’, much of the song does hit worryingly close to home. He references a plethora of harmful aspects of modern society, from drug abuse (‘Benzos and gasoline’) to an addiction to scrolling through social media (‘Coffee and blue light screens till the morning’). The contrast between ’benzos’, which reduce anxiety, and ‘coffee’, which has the opposite effect in many, is intentional, with Hozier seemingly conveying how people are struggling to feel comfortable - exacerbating the irony of his line, ‘Living the dream’.

“If I tell you this is drowning

You'll tell me I'm walking on water

I could bring fire from the mountain

You'd tell me it feels a little colder”

Hozier underlines here how any cries from help in this destructive system will fall on deaf ears, highlighting how those in control would go to the lengths of trying to gaslight or gloss over his sensation of ‘drowning’ and portray it as ‘walking on water’.

This verse seemingly contains a Biblical reference to Jesus walking on water. Perhaps this is Hozier accusing those in power of twisting religious messaging and using it as a means of justifying suffering and sacrifice for ‘the greater good’ during wartime.

The phrase ‘fire from the mountain’ could be a nod to Omar Cabezas’ famous book of the same name. It recounts his days as guerrilla fighting the Somoza dynasty, and appears to align with the rebellious ambience of Hozier's ‘Nobody's Soldier’. Hozier again underlines that those in control would simply depict his ‘fire’ as making it feel ‘colder’, seemingly touching on how governments might try to extinguish the fiery spirit of those who rebel against the system.

“I don't wanna choose between being a salesman or a soldier

Just let me look a little older

Let me step a little bolder

Choose between being a butcher or a pauper

Honey, I'm taking no ordеrs

Gonna be Nobody's Soldier”

The hook finds Hozier doubling down on his refusal to be forced to join a fight he doesn't believe in. He dismisses the dichotomies of either being a ‘salesman’ or a ‘soldier’, or a ‘butcher’ or a ‘pauper’. This seems to carry the veiled insinuation that wars not only turn ordinary citizens into soldiers, but also provide opportunities for various companies to profit off the fighting through arms sales.

Hozier stresses that he doesn't subscribe to the idea that, if certain governments don't take part in certain wars, this will leave them financially worse off - i.e. ‘paupers’.

“Sick to my skin

Watching the nеws again

Whatever you choose, you lose out in the long run

Paint on the walls

Comes down like a waterfall

The goal I was aiming for was the wrong one”

Hozier relatably describes feeling sickened by the stream of horrors being reported across the news. He extends the rock-and-a-hard-place disparities in the hook by painting a gloomy picture where, “Whatever you choose, you lose out in the long run”.

The ‘Work Song’ crooner evocatively depicts a wall with paint peeling away like a waterfall. The juxtaposition between the broken-down feel of the wall and the overwhelming beauty of a cascading waterfall creates a feeling of yearning for a return to a more ‘natural’ and ‘harmonious’ way of viewing the world - one in which wars have no place.

Hozier concludes by lamenting how his initial objectives were misplaced, perhaps conveying that the positive life-goals suggested to us by ‘the system’ are in fact damaging.

During a backstage interview at Osheaga Festival, Hozier shed some light on how ‘Nobody's Soldier’ came about, “This song is quite like, kind of, Rock ‘n Roll. I suppose it's a song about not wanting to end up in destructive systems, or systems that are inherently destructive that are very, very hard to not find ourselves within. I suppose it's a song of conscience, you know, or kind of conscientious objection...”

When discussing the inspiration behind his Unaired EP as a whole, Hozier explained, “So one thing that I came away with from the album sessions was just how much material, you know, I kind of had on my hands. It was a pretty intensely creative period. Once I kind of hit the ground with a lot of ideas and then, you know, at the end of the album process we had far more material than we could put onto one album. So we have Unheard and then, you know, a few more songs for another EP called Unaired as well...which has got three songs in it, one is ‘Nobody's Soldier’, two others, ‘July’ and a song I wrote with a wonderful artist called Bedouine called ‘That You Are’. They will be part of the kind of more extended world of the album, I suppose. It's just fun to share them, I think it would have been sad not to let them run out in the world and see what they do”.

Taking to social media, the ’Too Sweet’ hitmaker touched on which circles of hell in Dante's Inferno the Unaired tracks were initially intended to be a part of, “These were a collection of songs that nearly made it to the album under the circles of gluttony, limbo, violence and the outward ‘ascent’, but couldn’t for various reasons”.

“Running with wolves

Working my miracles

Holding my world together with a bootstring

Living the dream

Benzos and gasoline

Coffee and blue light screens till the morning

-

If I tell you this is drowning

You'll tell me I'm walking on water

I could bring fire from the mountain

You'd tell me it feels a little colder

-

I don't wanna choose between being a salesman or a soldier

Just let me look a little older

Let me step a little bolder

Choose between being a butcher or a pauper

Honey, I'm taking no ordеrs

Gonna be Nobody's Soldier

-

Sick to my skin

Watching the nеws again

Whatever you choose, you lose out in the long run

Paint on the walls

Comes down like a waterfall

The goal I was aiming for was the wrong one

-

If I say that this is drowning

You'll tell me I'm walking on water

I could bring fire from the mountain

You'd tell me it feels a little colder

-

I don't wanna choose between being a salesman or a soldier

Just let me look a little older

Let me step a little bolder

Choose between being a butcher or a pauper

Honey, I'm taking no orders

Gonna be Nobody's Soldier

-

Mmm being a butcher (Nobody's Soldier)

Or a pauper (Nobody's Soldier)

I'm gonna (Nobody's Soldier)

I'm gonna be Nobody's soldier

-

I don't wanna choose between being a salesman or a soldier

Stand here, just let me look a little older

Let me step a little bolder

Choose between being a butcher or a pauper

Honey, I'm taking no orders

Gonna be Nobody's Soldier”

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