Photography: Hank Hates (background), Bella Villa (foreground)
Mexican-American artist El Caplan brings Hozier’s modern classic into darker territory, blending tremolo-soaked baritone guitar, gospel-inspired harmonies and a cinematic gothic Western aesthetic for the Recording Academy’s ReImagined series.
Hozier’s “Take Me to Church” isn’t an easy song to reinterpret. Its commanding melody, provocative religious imagery and emotional intensity are so closely associated with the original recording that any artist taking it on faces a particular challenge: how do you make such a familiar song your own without losing what made it compelling in the first place?
For Mexican-American musician El Caplan, the answer was to bring the song into a world he’s spent years creating, one where American roots music, Mexican cultural influences and a darker, cinematic sensibility meet.
Invited by the Recording Academy to participate in its GRAMMY ReImagined series for Hispanic Heritage Month, El Caplan approached Hozier’s composition with an arrangement built around tremolo-soaked baritone guitar, piano and gospel-inspired backing vocals. The result preserves the song’s melodic and lyrical foundation while giving it a distinctly gothic Western character.
Released on September 29, 2026, the performance introduces a broader audience to an artist whose musical identity has long existed at the intersection of cultures and genres.
A Modern Classic, Stripped Back to Its Bones
Originally released in 2013, Hozier’s “Take Me to Church” became an international breakthrough and earned a GRAMMY nomination for Song of the Year in 2015. Its use of religious language to explore love, desire and institutional authority helped establish it as one of the defining songs of its era.
For El Caplan, its appeal began with the strength of the songwriting.
“I admire Hozier’s songwriting so much, and ‘Take Me to Church’ feels like such a classic, timeless song,” he explains.
While exploring previous GRAMMY Song of the Year nominees and winners, El Caplan found himself drawn to the composition. He could already envision a different musical setting, one built around the haunting character of a tremolo-soaked baritone guitar, with female gospel-inspired harmonies supporting his soulful vocal delivery.
But the arrangement was secondary to his admiration for the song itself.
“At the end of the day, songwriting is what matters most to me,” he says. “When I pick covers, I like to get to a song’s essential elements: the melody, the lyrics, and the chords.”
That philosophy is central to his approach. Rather than altering a song simply to distinguish his version from the original, El Caplan looks for the qualities that make it endure. Once those elements are established, he can explore how a different arrangement might bring out another side of the composition.
With “Take Me to Church,” he found a song whose emotional weight and lyrical imagery already felt remarkably close to his own artistic instincts.
Where Gospel Meets the Gothic West
The term “goth-cowboy” might initially bring to mind a visual aesthetic, but in El Caplan’s music, that identity extends well beyond appearances. It informs his instrumentation, arrangements and the atmosphere he creates around a song.
For “Take Me to Church,” the darker tones of the baritone guitar provide a natural counterpoint to the gospel-inspired backing vocals. The combination draws on two musical traditions that, despite their apparent differences, share a capacity for expressing longing, spiritual conflict and deeply personal emotion.
Joining El Caplan are Allen Moreno on guitar, Jean-Luc Eldenwood on piano, and ANDREA and BodaciousThang on backing vocals.
The relatively intimate ensemble gives the arrangement room to establish its own character while keeping the song’s lyrics and melody at the forefront.
It’s also a particularly fitting combination for Hozier’s writing. The original uses the language of worship to explore desire, vulnerability and the conflict between personal conviction and institutional judgment. Those themes are already familiar territory for El Caplan.
“The song’s exploration of relationships, sensuality and conflict, alongside its religious imagery, felt very natural to me,” he explains. “Those are things that show up in my own work, so I could immediately imagine putting my own goth-cowboy spin on it.”
That connection is what makes the arrangement more than a stylistic exercise. The gospel influences speak directly to the song’s religious imagery, while the darker Western instrumentation brings it closer to El Caplan’s established sound.
Rather than imposing an unrelated identity on the composition, he draws out qualities that were already present and gives them a different musical expression.
Photo: Hank Hates
The Mexican-American Identity Behind the Performance
El Caplan’s involvement with GRAMMY ReImagined began when a producer discovered his music through The SoCal Sound/Bilingual Sounds’ Local Music Spotlight Live, eventually leading to an invitation to participate in the Recording Academy’s Hispanic Heritage Month programming.
The opportunity was particularly meaningful for an artist whose relationship with Mexican and American culture has been a defining influence throughout his musical career.
In a previous interview with IndieBird Studio, El Caplan spoke about growing up with a mother from Sinaloa, Mexico, and an American musician father. His early experiences with traditional ballet folklórico introduced him to Mexican cultural expression, while his broader musical upbringing exposed him to an equally wide range of American influences.
That duality has become an essential part of his artistic identity, informing both his original music and his approach to reinterpretation.
For the ReImagined performance, those influences also helped shape the visual production.
Directed by Chicana filmmaker Hilaria Larriva, the video was filmed at the Jesus Wall inside Los Angeles’ historic Brewery Arts Complex, a location El Caplan had wanted to use for some time.
The setting provides a striking connection to the religious imagery at the heart of Hozier’s lyrics, while Larriva’s direction incorporates the Mexican-American influences that have long informed El Caplan’s aesthetic.
“Working with Chicana filmmaker Hilaria Larriva brought the visual side into focus,” El Caplan says. “She helped bring out the Mexican-American influences that are already woven into my music and gothic Western aesthetic.”
The performance was filmed by Matt Blake, the in-house videographer for 88.5 The SoCal Sound and Bilingual Sounds.
Photo: Hank Hates
Together, the location, cinematography and musical arrangement establish a cohesive artistic identity. The visual presentation feels connected to the music rather than existing simply as a backdrop for it.
For El Caplan, the collaboration was an opportunity to present the cultural influences already embedded in his work, rather than adopting a new identity for the occasion.
Reinterpretation Without Reinvention
El Caplan’s fascination with transforming familiar songs predates his involvement with the Recording Academy.
In his earlier conversation with IndieBird Studio about “Escándalo,” he described hearing La Sonora Dinamita’s recording on Los Angeles radio and recognizing something timeless beneath its original production. The melody, chords and lyrics suggested possibilities that extended well beyond the song’s familiar arrangement.
That experience reflects the thinking behind his “El Vaquero Güero” concept, which brings the mythology and imagery of the American West together with Mexican musical and cultural influences.
Although “Escándalo” and “Take Me to Church” come from very different musical traditions, the connection between El Caplan’s interpretations is clear.
Both begin with an appreciation for the original songwriting. From there, he explores how the material might exist within his own musical vocabulary, whether the starting point is a Latin popular classic or a globally recognized contemporary hit.
It’s a method that allows him to experiment without treating reinvention as an end in itself.
With “Take Me to Church,” the process is especially revealing because the original composition already contains several themes that resonate throughout his work. The religious symbolism, sensuality and emotional conflict require little conceptual adjustment to fit his gothic Western world.
Seen in that context, his GRAMMY ReImagined performance isn’t an isolated experiment or a sudden stylistic departure. It’s a continuation of an artistic approach he’s been developing through both his original recordings and his interpretations of other artists’ music.
IndieBird Comment: Finding Another Home for a Familiar Song
There’s always a temptation to judge a cover of a famous song by how dramatically it departs from the original. But originality isn’t necessarily measured by the distance an artist creates between two versions.
What makes El Caplan’s interpretation of “Take Me to Church” compelling is the relationship between the material and the musical identity he brings to it.
Hozier’s composition already contains the emotional and symbolic elements that run through El Caplan’s own work. The gothic Western instrumentation and gospel-inspired vocals don’t need to manufacture that connection. They simply give those elements a different setting in which to emerge.
The visual collaboration with Hilaria Larriva strengthens that relationship, adding a cultural and cinematic dimension that feels consistent with the artist’s broader creative direction.
Perhaps most importantly, the performance reveals something about El Caplan’s priorities as a musician. Despite the possibilities offered by a recognizable song, an unusual arrangement and a distinctive visual identity, he continues to return to the fundamentals of songwriting.
His appearance in the Recording Academy’s ReImagined series introduces that philosophy to a wider audience while offering a clear expression of the musical world he’s been creating.
El Caplan doesn’t need to make “Take Me to Church” unrecognizable to make it his own. He keeps the heart of the song intact and gives it somewhere new to live.
El Caplan — Take Me to Church | GRAMMY ReImagined
Performance Credits:
- Artist: El Caplan
- Original Song: Hozier — “Take Me to Church”
- Guitar: Allen Moreno
- Piano: Jean-Luc Eldenwood
- Backing Vocals: ANDREA and BodaciousThang
- Director: Hilaria Larriva
- Cinematography: Matt Blake
- Series: GRAMMY ReImagined
- Presented by: Recording Academy