Take Me To Church Guitar Lesson – Hozier

Genre:

Difficulty:
Length: 12:33

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Wikipedia page
Artist website
Music video

• Barre chords
• Chord changes
• Open chords
• Strumming patterns

Take me to Church by Hozier, which an immensely popular song when it was released in 2013, it’s a lot of fun to play along with the original, or sing if you can. In today’s lesson, we’ll learn all the parts of the song separately, and you can fit them together based on the tabs you can download from the tabs section of this page.

The song is played in the key of E minor, and sometimes he plays the guitar tuned down 2 semitones, which means that if you’re trying to play along with one of his songs on YouTube, and it doesn’t seem right, you’ve probably got a version with the alternate tuning. My lesson is in standard tuning, and we'll be learning the song using just fingerstyle.

Click here for the version you can play along with.

First of all, we’ll learn to play the verse to Take Me To Church. It’s interesting and a bit off, since he jumps in between 6/4 time and standard 4/4 time (6/4 is when there are 6 beats to the measure). I’ll tell you what time signature we’re using in the video lesson.

After the verse, we’ll learn the AMEN part, which is in 6/4 time as well.

Next, we’ll learn the chorus chords and the strumming pattern. You can play the chorus using barre chords, or open chords. Hozier uses barre chords to make the chorus sound different, but I’ll teach you both versions. I would recommend using the barre chords if you can. It’s great practice, it’ll give you a really good barre chords workout.

We’ll also learn the bridge he plays towards the end, as well as 2 short riffs played several times during the song.

You chose a great song to learn today. It’s one of those songs that actually have something to say, which is rare nowadays from mainstream music.

Take Me To Church song details

The song was released in 2013 by the Irish Andrew Hozier-Byrne album title Hozier. Hozier was a struggling musician at the time when he wrote and recorded this song. It was released by independent label Rubyworks, and once the song started going viral on YouTube, Hozier was signed to a major label following a bidding war (Columbia Records).

The song is about Hozier’s frustration with the Catholic Church, and “reclaiming your humanity through an act of love”.

The music video created for the song tells the story of a gay couple being persecuted because of their sexual orientation. Hozier himself is straight.

Take Me To Church charts and rankings

The song reached the top of the charts across the world, bringing fame and future to the once struggling musician.

It was Spotify’s most played song in 2014, with 87 million listens.

Please see the song’s Wikipedia page for a detailed list of all of its chart positions.

If you want to refine the skills you learned in Take Me To Church, check out these lessons on songs by clicking these links:
Barre chords / Chord changes / Open chords / Strumming patterns

Please log in and revisit this page to download this song's tabs and backing track (along with hundreds more on the site).