Hozier: Work Song Meaning

Song Released: 2014

Work Song Lyrics

Boys workin on empty
Is that the kinda way to face the burning heat?
I just think about my baby
I'm so full of love I could barely eat
There's nothing sweeter than my baby
I never want once from the cherry tree
Cause my baby's sweet as can...

1. 1TOP RATED

   #1 top rated interpretation:
   anonymous

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   Oct 31st 2018 !⃝

   This song is 100% about heroin if u have ever done it. U would understand. It makes u sick with a fever & feel like death if u don’t have it. U will wish u were dead that’s how bad it makes u feel. BUT NO MATTER HOW CLOSE TO DEATH YOU FEEL u will get up & go get it as soon as u find it. Hence the name “work song” bc he is working to find his one true love his everything at that moment & unfortunately it is a drug. Boys working on empty meaning he has no heroin to put the lighter to the spoon. I swear it’s a double meaning song u could think it’s truly ab real love but it’s about loving the drug.
2. anonymous

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   May 18th 2022 !⃝

   So I have been listening to this song on repeat and I’m certain he’s saying:
   
   “I woke with her walls around me.
   Nothing in her room but an empty crypt. “
   
   Anyone else?
   
   
3. anonymous

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   Nov 28th 2019 !⃝

   The man works hard hours and his lover is the only thing keeping him going. He did something bad in his past but she looks past that.
4. anonymous

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   Oct 31st 2019 !⃝

   He's working on a chain gang (the claps are like the pickax sounds in Brother Where Art Thou), telling his fellow prisoners about the woman he's madly in love with.
   He met her when she found him drunk and sick after he'd committed some terrible crime in which he'd hurt or killed someone.
   Somehow she got him back to her house and when he sobered up, she was having sex with him ("woke with her walls around me" = vaginal walls).
   He thinks she was taking care of him despite whatever terrible thing(s) he had done earlier. He feels redeemed by what he sees as her unconditional love (because she didn't seem to care what he'd done before - didn't even seem interested).
   He thinks he's found this great pure forever love, a love worth living for, but really she was only using him to try to get pregnant again, to replace the only thing she cared about - the child she'd lost before she met him.
5. NishkaNoble

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   Oct 30th 2019 !⃝

   for the longest while i was thinking this was a song welcoming death with gallantry but i realize that this is a man who found drugs to be his weakness and when taking this drug its the best feeling he's ever known.This drug accepts him however he comes, it ask no question but embrace him warmly. When he has it he's wanting of nothing more and has never been happier, hes so excited he cannot eat.Boys working on empty-they are hungry but what does it matter when this drug is so much more than food. "I was burning up with fever i didn't care much how long I lived, I swear i thought i dreamed her she never asked me once about the wrong i did" Drugs make you sick and has a lot of side effect where fever is one of them and when the fever was on him it was so bad he thought he would die but he didn't care about that he wanted his love which was his drug.
6. anonymous

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   Aug 17th 2019 !⃝

   This is a sad little love song. I think the song purely is about love and he loves her so much that even if he passed away he would crawl home to her. I think it's a song about unconditional love really.
7. anonymous

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   Dec 4th 2018 !⃝

   This is a love song about a man who works a physically hard job but knows that someone loves him and waits for him. After his death, he visualizes himself still returning to her.
8. anonymous

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   Nov 6th 2018 !⃝

   He killed the baby

   This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
9. anonymous

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   Jul 30th 2018 !⃝

   He is a hard labourer who just thinking about his wife back home.
10. GOMEOWNASAI

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    Jan 14th 2018 !⃝

    A man made a "drunken sin" and woke up to a broken woman "with her walls all around" and "nothing in her room but an empty crib" and despite "what (his) hands and (his) body done" to her, she "...fret none".
    
    Despite inflicting pain to her (perhaps sexual abuse, physical harm, or the sort), she remains faithful and loving. The man recognizes this and begins to see her as a symbol of redemption and hope. Death won't stop him and he doesn't need religion to save him. She is all he needs.

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