Jackboot Jump by Hozier

Transcript:

Hello and welcome to what will hopefully be a riveting discussion about the institution of capitalism, the history of protests, and the Nazi army’s choice in footwear. I’m your host Erin McLysaght and I am delighted to be talking to you today about a song from one of my favorite musical artists, Hozier.

If you were alive in 2014, you were probably unable to get through the day without hearing the song “Take me to Church”, Hozier’s most popular song and also his first big hit. According to the Billboard hot 100 music chart, “Take me to Church” spent 41 weeks in the top 100 and peaked at #2 on the chart. To date, the song has been certified platinum five times.

The first time you listen to the song you’re like - “okay, this is pretty good! Ooh, his voice is kinda sexy…” - and that’s probably the attitude that got the song as popular as it was to begin with. But what ended up getting the song to go viral was the accompanying music video. The video told the story of two gay men, in love and getting hit with a lot of homophobia for it. When the video premiered, gay marriage was still not legal in the United States, and while the public attitude towards LGBT people was getting more positive by the day, there was (and still is) a great deal of homophobia in the US and the world at large. So, “Take Me To Church” became an anthem for people who had been told for years that their love was wrong.

From the start of his career, Andrew Hozier Byrne is a man who’s been committed to social justice and has done his best to give a voice to marginalized people. His most recent album, Wasteland, Baby! was publically dedicated to the Black artists such as Nina Simone and Mavis Staples that Hozier has often said inspire his music.

Overall, Hozier is a very socially conscious person. His music and his career outside music have always included elements of social justice, but his most recent song release is probably his most overtly political.

On November 21st, 2019, Hozier released the song “Jackboot Jump”, and I’ve gotta say, outside of simply agreeing with the message of the song, it’s an absolute bop. Hozier is technically a folk/indie artist, but I’d classify this song as more folk-rock. The guitar and drums come in hard right away, [ overlay beginning of song here ] and it’s immediately an anthem you wanna stomp your boots to - pun intended. I’ll be honest, this is a song I listen to when I wanna get fired up; for those times I just really want to dismantle the establishment and fight The Man, capital “m”.

From the time Hozier starts singing, you’re clear on the fact that this guy is pissed off - bad stuff is happening in the world, and he’s got some things to say. The lyrics cover everything from the Hong Kong protests to homophobic discrimination in Russia, but the song opens on Hozier’s thoughts about the Standing Rock protests.

If you’re not immediately familiar with those protests, you probably didn’t have internet access for most of 2016, and 2017 as well. Quick crash course on that: Big Oil decided that they wanted to build the Dakota Access Pipeline, a crude oil pipeline from North Dakota to southern Illinois, but the protests began when the pipeline was moved from its original course to cross over sacred Native lands and threatened to contaminate the water supply of the Standing Rock Sioux. Understandably they weren’t very happy that the course of the pipeline had been altered to take a “less obtrusive route” - read as, “less disruptive to wealthy white people” - and the protests that followed gained national attention, mostly because of the fact that armed soldiers showed up at the protests and bombarded the demonstrators with tear gas, water cannons, and rubber bullets.

Alright, with that in mind, let’s give this song a listen and dive into some of the lyrics.

[ At Standing Rock the Jackboot Jump

You'd swear was all the rage

Whether tearing up old treaties

Or just tearing up the place

It's always corporate infrastructure

Over the structure of your face ]

Okay, so there’s a lot to talk about just in this first part.

Some immediate, surface level observations; Hozier is making it clear that he knows what we all already know: the Dakota Access Pipeline and its route are obviously unjust and racist. If the sacred lands they were crossing over were, say, Catholic sacred lands, this would never have been allowed. The line “It’s always corporate infrastructure / over the structure of your face” is a clear and direct reference to the fact that corporations are willing to steamroll the rights of others for personal profit, assuming they aren’t white.

As for the “tearing up old treaties” line, that digs a little deeper into the history of the Standing Rock Sioux. The treaty Hozier is referring to here is most likely the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. This treaty guaranteed that any Native people living on reservations in the area would be granted “undisturbed use and occupation of the land”. Well, tunneling through sacred land and potentially contaminating their water supply doesn’t exactly count as “undisturbed”.

“Tearing up the place” - that’s pretty direct and clear. Native lands have historically been destroyed and defaced, the most obvious example being Mount Rushmore, back when we decided to deface the sacred Black Hills with the faces of some of America’s founders. Here, it’s referring to the destruction of land - and water - owned by the Standing Rock Sioux.

Now that we’ve talked a little about the immediate and literal connections, let’s take a look at the whole “Jackboot Jump” thing - what the hell is he talking about?

Well, if you haven’t heard the phrase “jackbooted thug” before, let me explain, starting with the word “jackboot”. “Jackboots” were the shoe of choice in the Nazi army; roughly knee height, polished black, pretty nondescript. Look them up, you probably saw a few pairs of them in WWII documentaries in high school.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the term “jackbooted” as “ruthlessly and violently oppressive”; if you hear the phrase “jackbooted thug”, someone is probably talking about a violent cop or other some other authoritarian figure. In other words - “The Jackboot Jump” Hozier is describing is not just a dance you haven’t heard of yet, and it certainly isn’t a compliment.

And we can deconstruct the metaphor of a dance here; when you think of a dance, you probably think: performance. Elaborate. Something beautiful, artistic, planned, something that you could learn the steps to and dance along, assuming it’s simple enough.

Saying “The Jackboot Jump” was all the rage, then, is likely Hozier’s way of saying that oppressive forces were doing a really, really good job at getting people to play along with their goals. And unfortunately, they did do kind of a good job; again, if you were alive in 2016/2017, you probably saw some guy’s op-ed in the Washington Post or something about how the Standing Rock Sioux need to sit down and shut up.

It’s intentional that Hozier names this pro-authoritarian dance “The Jackboot Jump”; the name invokes other dances that aren’t as skilled and complex as ballet or interpretive dance. You hear “Jackboot Jump” and think: square dancing, the electric slide… flossing. Dances that the average person can see, consume, and learn themselves.

Saying that “The Jackboot Jump” was all the rage says to the listener that oppression was prominent at Standing Rock; The Man, capital “M”, came in and taught a lot of people this dance, and a lot of people were really happy to dance along - you might call those people boot-lickers, another phrase I’m sure I don’t have to define for you.

Now, we can actually leave the strict boundaries of the song a little bit to get some background. Hozier spoke out after the release of the song and said that even the “Jump” part of “Jackboot Jump” has a very specific inspiration. If you’ve read George Orwell’s 1984, you might be familiar with it: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- forever.”

This is all pretty heavy stuff; oppression and police brutality are real, but Hozier wants us to know that if you’re getting “stamped on”, then you’re doing something right! Let’s take another look at some of the lyrics in Jackboot Jump!

[ All around the world

You'd think that things were looking rough

But the jackboot only jumps down

On people standing up

So you know good things are happening

When the jackboot needs to jump ]

He’s not wrong - there’s a lot of bad stuff going on right now. Violence, the rise of authoritarian regimes, political unrest; it’s all happening, and we’re all here watching it unfold. But Hozier wants to tell us: The Man, capital “M”, is only out there trying to crush you because they know positive change is coming, and they know that the status quo is being challenged.

And that’s something that’s worth sitting with for a minute; as scary as things are, as many atrocities that are happening, the people that are standing up and speaking out are facing all this backlash because the world at large knows that change is coming.

That’s pretty good, too; we’re due for a shakeup, and hopefully one that will end with equality and peace for all.

Thanks for listening, everyone. I’m Erin McLysaght, and this has been an exploration into Hozier’s “Jackboot Jump”.

Credit and thanks to Wikipedia, Billboard.com and americanindian.si.edu for some of the facts stated in this podcast. Thank you to Andrew Hozier Byrne for the song discussed, “Jackboot Jump”.