First Time
Hozier's album Unreal, Unearth tells the story of Dante's narrative poem The Divine Comedy. In this poem, the speaker journeys through hell and how he eventually reaches paradise. The song First Time is linked to the first circle of hell, Limbo. This circle is for those who weren't necessarily sinful but unbaptized and therefore cannot enter Heaven. Here souls wander aimlessly, wishing for the nirvana they will never reach.
This song tells about the love that spurred on his journey into hell in the first place and the cycle of beginning and ending. Hozier said himself, “[it feels] like your world collapsing in on you, and then going again.”
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The singer begins by explaining how unfit he felt in his body and how he hated his name before his love uttered it. This love made him forget his whole life and eased the pain in his soul. He tells of how each time they say his name, part of him dies and is born again.
He cuts off in a tangent about the gift of life and his presumable death. He lives on in the flowers his mother places on his grave and tells about how tumultuous and painful living is. How all creation inherently wishes and fights for the same thing.
He resumes with the story of his love and its end. He mentions their final fight and explains that the emptiness he feels has been with him since he was young. He wonders when was the last time his love said his name and how the final piece of him died yet another came alive.
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The narrator's longing is akin to the idea of limbo - those in it are not being punished yet something will always be missing, something they will forever yearn for. Each time the lover calls to him the cycle begins and ends again.
The Lyrics
Remember once I told you 'bout
How before I heard it from your mouth
My name would always hit my ears
As such an awful sound
And the soul, if that's what you'd call it
Uneasy ally of the body
It felt nameless as a river undiscovered underground
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And the first time that you kissed me
I drank dry the River Lethe
The Liffey would have been softer on my stomach all the same
But you spoke some quick new music
That went so far to soothe this soul
As it was and ever shall be
Unearth without a name
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Some part of me must have died
The first time that you called me baby
And some part of me came alive
The first time that you called me baby
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These days I think I owe my life
To flowers that were left here by my mother
Ain't that like them, gifting life to you again
This life lived mostly underground
Unknowing either sight nor sound
'Til reaching up for sunlight
Just to be ripped out by the stem
Sensing only now it's dying
Drying out then drowning blindly
Blooming forth its every colour
In the moments it has left
To share the space with simple living things
Infinitely suffering
But fighting off like all creation
The absence of itself
Anyway
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Some part of me must have died
Each time that you called me baby
But some part of me stayed alive
Each time that you called
Each time that you called
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C'mere, ooh-la-la
Ooh-la-la
Whatever keeps you around
It keeps you around
Ooh-la-la
C'mere, ooh-la-la
Whatever keeps you around
It keeps you around
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The last time it was heard out loud
The perfect genius of our hands and mouths were shocked
To resignation as the arguing declined
When I was young I used to guess
Are there limits to any emptiness?
When was the last time?
C'mere to me, when was the last time?
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Some part of me must have died
The final time you called me baby
But some part of me came alive
The final time you called me baby