Like Real People Do

One great thing that music offers us is the opportunity to relate to something when it seems like you’re the only one who feels the way you do. 

Andrew Hozier-Bryne, more commonly known as Hozier, is a singer-songwriter from Ireland. Hozier has a way of writing that makes it easy to relate to what he’s saying. One example of how he does this is his song Like Real People Do. 

This song is so beautifully written that it’s hard not to love it. Not only is the music satisfying to listen to, but the lyrics carry something special and entirely different from anything you’ve ever heard.

The lyrics tell a story of two people who get into a relationship with a lot of baggage. However, neither of them want to share their past. They want to move forward and forget. In order to achieve this, they don’t tell each other the weight that they are carrying. 

The first verse goes as follows, “I had a thought dear, however scary, about that night. The bugs and the dirt, why were you digging? What did you bury, before those hands pulled me from the Earth?”

This first verse is the thought of one of the people in the relationship. He is asking himself what the other person’s life was like before they met each other. He is curious about what things haunt their partners’ past. 

The last line of the first verse also hints at this person carrying a lot of hurt from a past relationship. 

After a hard breakup from a relationship that you thought would last forever, you might feel a little hopeless or, to be more dramatic, dead. The last line of this verse is important because it helps you understand where the person is coming from. 

The line says, “Before those hands pulled me from the dirt.” This symbolizes that his partner pulled him from his dark spot and showed him how to love again.

The pre chorus is next, “I will not ask you where you came from. I will not ask you, neither should you.”

This line of the song is one that stands out to me. The person in the relationship is telling their partner that he won’t dig into their past or ask questions about it because that’s what he wants in return. He wants to move on with his life and escape the things that were following him and he respects that they might want the same thing.

The chorus of the song follows, “Honey just put your sweet lips on my lips. We should just kiss like real people do.”

In the chorus he is telling his partner not to question, or think, or worry. Instead, just love and kiss him “like real people do”. It’s his way of escaping the world.

The next verse is, “I knew that look, dear eyes always seeking. Was there in someone that dug long ago? So I will not ask you why were you creeping, in some sad way I already know.”

What this verse is showing is that he recognizes a look in his partners eyes. Whether it’s fear or anxiety of their past catching up to them, he sees it. He says again that he won’t ask them why they’re hiding things because he’s already guessed at what it is and he knows the pain that comes with it.

The song ends with the pre chorus and the chorus repeating two more times.

Hozier has a gift of writing that helps people relate to his music. This song doesn’t have to be about people with traumas relating to past relationships. It could be about abuse, family losses, or even things that are much darker.

That’s the amazing thing about music, you can make it about whatever you want it to be about.

This song will always hold a place in my heart because not only does it sound peaceful with the guitar picking pattern but, in my opinion, the lyrics tell a story of two beautifully broken people who live their lives after the circumstances that broke them in the first place.