Saturday Night Live: Hozier sings ‘Fairytale of New York’

Hozier served as the musical guest for Saturday Night Live tonight, and we honestly expected a mix of things going in. We were sure that he’d perform at least one of his own songs, but at the same time some sort of holiday classic felt on the table.

So what did he choose to do? For his first song, the singer / guitarist offered up a change of pace from the rest of the show. He led with a deep bass into “Too Sweet,” a song that he released a little bit earlier this year. It had a strong mid-tempo vibe and kept the energy pretty high in the studio — which we think was needed when you consider the overall content of this episode. Remember here that we had a number of cameos and uproarious sketches — it would have been startling to suddenly go into a ballad at this point.

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We tend to think that a lot of viewers out there may be familiar with Hozier due to “Take Me to Church” from a few years back; yet, this was a chance to get more fans aware of some of his other tracks. By all accounts, we’ll say that this is mission accomplished and then some.

As for the second song, Hozier chose a somewhat unexpected choice — a cover of “Fairytale of New York” from The Pogues. This is a song that has some pretty powerful lyrics, and we love the emphasis that came through the Celtic music throughout. It is also not a song that we’ve ever heard Hozier cover before personally, but this was a really lovely rendition that felt perfect for this time of year. Kudos to him for coming on and doing a holiday song when it could have been easy to do something from his own catalogue.

Related – See our take on this week’s Saturday Night Live cold open right now

What did you think about Hozier’s performances on Saturday Night Live tonight?

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