NEW YORK, NY.- A decade ago, Irish singer-songwriter Andrew Hozier-Byrne, who performs as Hozier, scored a surprise global hit with his debut single, “Take Me to Church,” thanks in large part to its black-and-white music video depicting an intimate relationship between two gay men, one of whom is attacked by a masked mob. The soulful, octave-hopping track, written as a rebuke to the Catholic Church’s stance on homosexuality, established Hozier as a serious, socially conscious artist. It peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned a Grammy nomination for song of the year.

Although Hozier hardly disappeared — his second album, “Wasteland, Baby!” from 2019, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, and its 2023 follow-up, the concept record “Unreal Unearth,” became his first U.K. No. 1 — for years afterward, he operated at a lower public profile, tagged by some as a one-hit wonder.

But Hozier, now on the road with a nine-piece band, is once again having a moment, courtesy of a younger generation of fans and a new hit song.

“We’re selling more tickets now than when I was in the charts with ‘Take Me to Church,’” Hozier, 34, said in an interview this month while onboard his tidy tour bus, which was parked on the grounds of Forest Hills Stadium, a 13,000-capacity amphitheater in New York City. The 6-foot-5 artist — dressed in a brown corduroy jacket and Adidas track pants, his shoulder-length hair pulled back in a bun — was just a few hours from playing the third of four sold-out nights there, a record-breaking run at the venue. In August, he will co-headline the first day of Lollapalooza in Chicago, with Tyler, the Creator.

In April, Hozier reached No. 1 on the Hot 100 with the bouncy “Too Sweet,” becoming the first Irish artist to claim the top spot since Sinead O’Connor, with “Nothing Compares 2 U,” in 1990. Sung from the vantage of the hard-partying half of a mismatched couple, “Too Sweet” is featured on Hozier’s “Unheard,” a recent EP of songs that didn’t make the cut for “Unreal Unearth,” which was inspired by Dante’s “Inferno.” The track was at No. 7 for a second consecutive week in mid-June.

Both Hozier and his manager, Caroline Downey, who’s been with him since the beginning, noted that all four Forest Hills shows sold out well before the release of “Too Sweet” and credited his surge in popularity to Gen Z listeners who discovered his music on TikTok. Songs featuring acoustic instruments, passionate vocals and dramatic dynamic shifts are ripe for heartstring-tugging clips about weddings, bucket-list trips and beloved pets, and Hozier has more than a few in his arsenal, including “Would That I,” from his second LP.

“We weren’t actively appealing to a younger fan base,” said Hozier, who is a low-key conversationalist, particularly when discussing his accomplishments. “The work was just there.” He added, “We were noticing early on that there were people who were 17, 18 in the front of those shows who would have been 9, 10 or 11 when ‘Take Me to Church’ came out.”

Canadian singer-songwriter Allison Russell, who is featured on the “Unheard” EP’s moving “Wildflower and Barley,” has seen these young fans up close as the opener on the current leg of Hozier’s tour. “They are queer-identifying,” she said of Hozier’s most fervent new devotees and, she believes, drawn to “a grown male who is radically loving, accepting, open and a tremendous, tremendous ally.”

Singer-songwriter and boygenius member Lucy Dacus, who made a surprise appearance for Hozier’s “I, Carrion (Icarian)” on Night 3 at Forest Hills, has her own theory on his audience. “Lesbians love Hozier,” she said in an interview. “His songs are so poetic and heartfelt, and they’re about yearning in a way that seems really genuine. I just think his lyricism is really great.” She added, “It’s really the yearning.”

When asked about his LGBTQ+ allyship, Hozier, who is straight, was more circumspect. “I struggle to be self-proclaimed anything around that,” said the singer, who’s known to display fans’ Pride flags onstage. “Why do they like me? I think it’s because there’s been space in the work for that kind of voice of conscience. And I’ve tried to be consistent with that.”

Consistency and patience have been integral to Hozier’s success. “We have always viewed him as a long-term artist,” Downey said. “He’s never been rushed. He takes a long time to actually make his albums, and there’s no pressure from his record labels; there’s no pressure from us.

“We look at him having a career, like Springsteen, in another 20 years,” she added, citing a fellow Columbia Records artist.

Hozier said that he was never particularly concerned with his hit count. “Most of the songs that I always admired and hoped to capture the quality of in my work were not charting hits,” he said. “From the age of 12 onwards, what was in the charts never really kind of appealed to me and never really resonated with me. There’s artists who we consider classic artists, who are legacy artists, who may never have had a Top 5 or Top 10.” He mentioned Tom Waits, a key influence, as an example.

Hozier’s No. 1, a spare track with a syncopated riff and a retro vibe, strikes a pop sweet spot (see: Foster the People’s “Pumped Up Kicks”; Portugal. The Man’s “Feel It Still”). “This song is interesting because it could stand next to almost anything,” said Chris Muckley, a director of music programming at SiriusXM who oversees The Spectrum, an alternative channel. “I could play this next to a Lumineers track or a Tom Petty song,” he continued. “Yet people are playing it on Top 40 stations, and it makes sense right next to a Billie Eilish song.” However, Muckley does not think that Hozier “is somebody that is looking at the latest trends and trying to neatly fit himself into that, at all.”

Indeed, songwriter and producer Dan Tannenbaum, known as Bekon, recalled that in the studio, Hozier “would often say, ‘Oh, I don’t know; there’s a lot of people doing that right now,’” in response to “overly commercial” suggestions. Tannenbaum, who has writing and production credits on “Too Sweet” and a majority of the tracks on “Unreal Unearth,” said he felt certain that with Hozier’s “sense of self,” the music “would be tasteful, yet with the hope of being successful, heard by many.”

While Hozier, who lives in the countryside of Wicklow, Ireland, has benefited from listeners sharing their intimate moments on social media accompanied by his music, he reveals little of himself online or in interviews. He was, however, happy to discuss beekeeping, a fairly recent pursuit, and the poetry readings — Seamus Heaney, Stephen Dunn — he did on Instagram Live during the height of the pandemic. (“If you wanted to talk history or novels or poems, he’s just very well-read,” Tannenbaum said.)

Hozier explained that he doesn’t like to attract attention outside of music-related activities, a desire sometimes undercut by his physical stature. (“I kind of stick out like a lanky thumb.”) The singer’s reticence has left room for fans to project all sorts of things onto him.

“He doesn’t chase the trappings of celebrity in any way,” Russell said. “They find that mysterious, and I think there’s a bit of fetishizing, if you will, of Ireland as a mystical, magical land of druids and fairies.” She recited some of the nicknames Hozier’s young acolytes had bestowed upon him: Forest Daddy, King of the Lesbians, the Bogfather, Irish Jesus.

Hozier described the fan perception of him as an amusing but sometimes mystifying phenomenon: “The Irish element — that’s the thing that seems exotic or whatever.”

So is Hozier a normal guy? “I’m grounded enough,” he replied. “But at the same time, does a normal guy sit down for an hour with The New York Times and play to how many thousand people a day? So there’s elements of that. But yeah, I’m not a woodsman.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.