- This is, yeah.
Okay.
(laughs) Asking this.
Would you say we're friends?
- No.
(Hozier laughing)
Hey, I'm Maren Morris and this is my good friend Hozier.
In honor of our "CMT Crossroads" episode,
we are gonna interview each other.
- Yeah. (Maren laughs)
Exciting.
- Introduce yourself.
What is your name?
What are we doing today?
- My name is Stephen Davidson, and-
(Maren snorts)
With a P-H.
- Oh, fancy. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's from Europe.
(Hozier laughs) (Maren laughs)
My name's Andrew Hozier-Byrne.
I was here 'cause I'm gonna join you
in singing your wonderful music.
- Yeah, we're merging bands a little bit.
I was told, at least the day we're taping this,
seven years ago to the day was the "Crossroads" taping
with Alicia Keys.
Seven feels like-
- Yeah. - A lucky.
It's the God number.
- It's a magic number.
I have a question, actually, about that.
- Okay.
- Who is more fun?
- (laughs) Oh my God. - Me or Alicia?
- Honestly, both.
Both. - Thank you.
Who has better facial hair?
- You do, yeah.
Gorgeous.
- Gorgeous. (Maren laughs)
We can work on the accent.
- Oh, gorgeous, thank you.
(both laughing)
Okay, so people mispronounce my name quite a bit.
I've been called Karen, Marian, Marren,
which might be the actual like
correct pronunciation of the name.
I don't know if there's any Maren's in Ireland.
- Know a few Marens.
- Yeah? - Maren Morris yeah.
- Do you get a lot of people mispronouncing yours?
- I do.
I've gotten everything from Stephen Davidson
to Ho-zee-aye is a common one.
- French. - Yeah.
It's originally a French name.
It's no point swimming against that tide.
It's just like that's the name.
- That tracks.
- When did you first hear my music?
- It had to have been 2015.
I heard "Take Me to Church."
That was like the song of the year.
I saw you on the Grammy's,
you did a collaboration of your song with Annie Lennox,
which is I think one of the best of the night.
- Aww.
- But yeah, we didn't meet 'til some years later.
- That's right, that's right, yeah.
- Do you have any nicknames,
and why is one of them Forest Daddy?
- Why?
(crickets chirping) (Hozier laughing)
I don't know where Forest Daddy came from.
- But you're a daddy of the forest.
- Yeah, I guess.
I think there's like this kind of mystifying thing
with the Irish gentlemens,
you know what I mean? - Mm-hmm.
- And I do live in the countryside.
Like I keep bees.
- You're a beekeeper?
- I am a beekeeper.
I'm of beekeeping age now.
And Bogfather.
- Bogfather!
(Hozier laughs)
That's good. - Yeah.
- Like woodland nymph king.
- Yeah, there's a bit of a woodland thing going on.
- Yeah!
Hey, it could be worse.
- Do you have any nicknames?
- Um, I can't say them on television.
- Okay.
(smooth music)
Your parents, and I did know this, own a hair salon.
- Mm-hmm.
- So on a scale of one to 10, how would you rate my hair?
- Top notch.
I don't think they would even see you
because they'd be like, "It's perfect already."
- Thank you.
- But yes, I grew up in a hair salon.
That's how I started singing was
they would throw Christmas parties for their salon guests
and I would steal the microphone at the karaoke machine
and started singing like "Somewhere over the Rainbow"
or whatever was in the catalog.
Okay, so you're obviously from Ireland.
Is there a country music scene in Ireland?
- Country music, oddly, found a strong place in Ireland.
- I think there is actual roots from like Celtic music.
- Yeah, there's some for sure
between Irish folk music and bluegrass and stuff.
There's a lot of country bands in Ireland.
- Wow.
The crowds are, in Dublin when we go there, always raucous.
- I'm glad to hear that.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- What do you think of my song "The Bones"
and how excited are you to sing it with me?
Okay, this was written.
- (laughs) Yeah.
I should stipulate that we didn't necessarily
write these questions. - Yeah, yeah.
But obviously I'm honored that you're on my song,
"The Bones." - I'm delighted.
- We've gotten to perform it a handful of times.
- Yeah.
- But we've never taped it,
so this is the first recording of it, I guess.
- I love the song.
I remember hearing it maybe for the first time was Bonnaroo.
Was it Bonnaroo where you were singing?
- Mm-hmm, I think it was.
- I was listening to your set,
and yeah, it just kind of, it got into me.
- Thanks. - Yeah.
Speaking of bones,
do you know how many bones are in the human body?
- Aren't there like 80 in your foot?
It's a lot.
- There's a lot.
- Yeah. - There's a lot.
I can't say for what the foot is
because they only wrote down the full answer here.
- Mm-hmm. - Which is 206.
- Okay. - Yeah.
- Most of those are in your foot.
- Most of them, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(both laughing)
- I feel like this kind of ties in.
I am a huge fan of your new single, "Eat Your Young."
- Oh, thank you.
- What's the strangest food you've ever eaten?
I feel like you've toured a lot,
so you've probably had some weird stuff on the road.
- Yeah. Nothing too crazy.
I think I have eaten gator.
- Yeah, I've had gator.
- Yeah. - Gator tail.
- Gator tail? - Yeah.
- It was fried in like a fish cake type thing.
- If it's fried, yeah, it's fine.
- Recently, I had snail for the first time, which was-
- Never done that.
- It was good.
- Bogfather eats snails. - There you go.
I did it once.
I'll do it again.
(Maren laughs)
In what ways do you think that we're alike?
- Well, this is something I've kind of
gotten to dig in during rehearsal with you
because we're not just singing "The Bones."
The commonality of our vocal tones is really complementary.
Getting to jump on your songs is just,
I feel so in my comfort zone.
- I love it.
I feel that way.
I think we blend.
Why should everybody watch our "Crossroads" episode?
- I think the fact that we're actually friends
makes this feel more organic.
I do feel like this has been infinitely more fun
because we just already have a rapport,
and our bands kind of know each other already.
You have a lot of Nashville people in your band, actually.
- Yeah, true, yeah.
- It felt really effortless to come in this week
and work with you.
- It's been a really natural fun process.
You're also debuting a song for the first time.
- Yeah, thank you.
- There you go.
- You should work for my publicity.
Well.
- Well.
Thank you. (laughs)
(smooth music)