When Hozier talks about Eat Your Young, he makes it sound almost playful until you realise what he’s actually serving.
In his own words, the song came from an idea that had been “cooking” in him for a while: the grotesque notion of sacrificing the future, children’s futures, for the sake of short-term gain.
“It’s a kind of an idea for a song that was cooking in me… this idea of where children become the ground for culture war for adults, especially when it comes to arms dealing or debates about gun rights. I wanted the voice in the song to be that voice of power that shrugs off any responsibility to the future.”
From the very first line — “I’m starvin’, darlin’ / Let me put my lips to something” — he seduces the listener with language that sounds sensual but masks something far more unsettling.
The Bigger Picture: Swift, Dante, and a Culture of Gluttony
Eat Your Young doesn’t pull its title out of nowhere. It nods to Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, the 1729 satirical essay suggesting the Irish poor could sell their children as food for the rich, a dark critique of colonial exploitation.
At the same time, the song drops you into the third circle of Dante’s Inferno, the realm of gluttony.
Hozier’s lines about carving, cooking, and devouring are steeped in that imagery.
But it’s not just about literal hunger, it’s a wider indictment of greed, consumerism, and the way the powerful feed on what should be left for the next generation.
Line by Line: Seduction, Consumption, Collapse
The verses keep twisting that knife. “Start carvin’, darlin’ / I wanna smell the dinner cookin’ / I wanna feel the edges start to burn.”
The narrator isn’t just hungry, he’s relishing the destruction. It’s an unreliable voice, full of dark humour.
As fans on Reddit have pointed out, the song’s seductive tone is designed to tempt you into this sin, not to celebrate it.
Even the infamous “seven new ways you can eat your young” line works like a dark clickbait hook.
Hozier once joked it’s a nod to those absurd listicle titles: “It’s always seven or fifteen ways to do something,” he laughed.
But here, that BuzzFeed wink twists into a reminder of how modern culture packages horrors for easy consumption.
The Sound: Blues, Gospel, and That Dangerous Groove
Hozier didn’t craft Eat Your Young alone. The production credits read like a genre-blending jam session: Bekon, best known for his work on Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN., helped shape the track alongside Stuart Johnson, Rappy, Valentino, and more.
Hozier himself called it an experiment in collaboration, a switch from his usual solo approach.
“To just be in a space with musicians and jam, that was how a lot of this music started… I’d take the stems away and build a song around it.”
Sonically, the song leans into a slinky, blues-laden groove with flashes of gospel.
The strings swell, the percussion pulses, and there’s always that undercurrent of something uncomfortably seductive.
It’s gluttonous music for a gluttonous theme. And it works. Eat Your Young topped Billboard’s Adult Alternative Airplay chart, Hozier’s third number one after Take Me to Church and Nina Cried Power.
Video Breakdown: Two Stages, Two Audiences
If the lyrics serve a feast, the official video doubles down on who’s doing the eating.
Directed by Jason Lester and starring Hozier alongside Ukrainian-American actress Ivanna Sakhno, the video splits its world into two stages.
On one stage, watched only by adults, you see characters who lose something vital of themselves, piece by piece, trying to fit rigid societal expectations.
The other stage is for children. They see what’s been lost, like a puppet show revealing the damage left behind.
A moment that sticks: the man and woman in the video literally cover limbs in black sleeves, implying mutilation to fit old ideals.
When they force the same onto their child, it’s a brutal visual for how generational values can wound what comes next.
In the end, the black backdrop lifts, the missing limbs reappear, but only for the children watching. The adults never really see the full cost.
So, What’s Really Being Served?
Plenty of listeners latch onto the sexual innuendo in the opening lines, and sure, it’s there on the surface.
But as the fan threads make clear, the seduction is only bait. It’s about the bigger feast: corporate greed, political games, climate collapse, war profiteering.
A generation that pulls up the ladder while the flood comes in.
And Hozier writes it with a grin.
“What was super fun about this song was to write from the perspective of a voice that really enjoys this… It’s not my alignment, but to lean into it and explore it in a grotesque way was super fun.”
One Last Bite
In the end, Eat Your Young dares you to ask: how far would you go to keep your plate full?
Are you the one pulling up the ladder, or the one left behind to drown?
And maybe that’s why the song sticks. It’s more than Swift’s satire, more than Dante’s Inferno, it’s a mirror.
One that says if we’re not careful, we’ll carve out our own future before we even get the chance to taste it.
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Hozier Eat Your Young Lyrics
I’m starving, Darling
Let me put my lips to something
Let me wrap my teeth around the world
Start carving, Darling
I want to smell the dinner cooking
I want to feel the edges start to burn
Honey, I
Want to race you to the table
If you hesitate
The getting is gone
I won’t lie
If there’s something to be gained
There’s money to be made
Whatever’s still to come
Get some
Pull up the ladder when the flood comes
Throw enough rope until the legs have swung
Seven new ways that you can eat your young
Come and get some
Skinning the children for a war-drum
Putting food on the table selling bombs and guns;
It’s quicker and easier to eat your young
You can’t buy this fineness
Let me see the heat get to it
Let me watch the dressing start to peel
It’s a kindness, Highness
Crumbs enough for everyone
Old and young are welcome to the meal
Honey, I’m
Making sure the table’s made
We can celebrate
The good that we’ve done
I won’t lie
If there’s something still to take
There is ground to break
Whatever’s still to come
Get some
Pull up the ladder when the flood comes
Throw enough rope until the legs have swung
Seven new ways that you can eat your young
Come and get some Skinning the children for a war-drum
Putting food on the table selling bombs and guns;
It’s quicker and easier to eat your young