Jess Glynne shares the story of how she wrote and recorded the hit song “Hold My Hand” with Jack from Clean Bandit on How It Went Down. She shares the spontaneity of the song's lyrics coming together, how it’s remained relevant four years after its release, and more!
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00:00Hey, I'm Jess Glynne, and this is how it went down for my song, Hold My Hand.
00:15Hold My Hand, I wrote in probably the end of 2014.
00:21I'll never forget that day, actually.
00:23I was with my friend, Jin Jin, and we were in the car driving to Kilburn in London
00:28to go to the studio to meet Jack from Clean Bandit, who I had rather be with.
00:35I don't know how it came about, but Darling, Hold My Hand came up in the car.
00:41We were talking about what we wanted to say, I think, in the song
00:44or what we were kind of going into the session with.
00:46I think we were just having a real friendship moment in the car,
00:49and by the time we got to the studio, we kind of had an idea of what we wanted to say,
00:53and that was when you're feeling kind of like the outcast in a room,
00:57there's one person that you know who's always got you.
01:00It was kind of crazy. The song came together so quickly.
01:03We kind of gave him the idea and what have you, and he just sat at the piano.
01:06In the corner of the room, we were sat on this little sofa,
01:09and he just started playing.
01:13And everything just went like that.
01:15As they say, the rest genuinely was history.
01:17It was just like the song just fell out of our kind of mouths, I guess.
01:21The lyrics were there, the message was there,
01:23and it was like a moment where we left that session
01:28knowing that we'd just done something really special.
01:30And it still took a while to actually finish the record,
01:33after we'd kind of started it,
01:35because we went back in again to add to the chorus,
01:38because we heard the song maybe a week or two in,
01:41and it was like something was missing,
01:43and then we kind of invited someone else in with fresh ears,
01:46because sometimes it really jars you when you listen to a song loads of times.
01:49And this lady called Ina Rosen came in and helped us kind of articulate the chorus.
01:54And the, like, I'm ready for this bit kind of came together.
02:01Hold My Hand video was a video that, again, I will never forget.
02:06It was the first big video where I sat back in my seat and felt like,
02:12wow, I've made it.
02:14I was going to LA to shoot this music video with this big director,
02:18Emil, who just, like, he'd done so many incredible videos prior to me,
02:23like Calvin Harris, just to name one.
02:25It was really important to me to have Jen in the video.
02:28It made no sense.
02:30I was like, I really want my friends in the video.
02:32And I have to be honest with you, this video,
02:34I actually don't know the story of what we were trying to achieve.
02:37It was just, like, cars zooming around,
02:39me standing in the middle of a desert,
02:41and just kind of having a moment.
02:44And then me hanging out with my friends.
02:48Hold My Hand
02:53This song obviously is super important to me
02:55and has been a massive part of my career.
02:57It was my first number one on my own.
02:59And it was number one for, like, four weeks.
03:01It's crazy to even think, like, the video's had over 160 million views to this day.
03:07The maddest thing about this record is that it got released in 2015,
03:11and we're in 2024.
03:13And right now it's, like, constantly being relived.
03:16Like, it's literally in the UK, the song of the summer.
03:18There's a jet company called Jet 2.
03:20It's their theme song.
03:22So, like, the adverts are, like, on all the time.
03:24The minute you hear the dun-dun-dun, it's like everyone knows it's summer.
03:28Which is quite a beautiful thing.
03:29But it's, like, the song that just never leaves my side.