Beyoncé's "Hold Up" Writing Credits
That One Beyonce Song That Was Written By Diplo, Soulja Boy, Father John Misty, Vampire Weekend, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs
By: Harry Sutton
Popular music utilizes collaboration now more than ever before, with big artists having access to talented collaborators all across the world. Not only can the world’s biggest pop stars employ musical masters to help them songwrite, engineer, and produce their music, but sampling and interpolation have also become increasingly common in pop music. This can lead to some gargantuan lists of contributors listed on song credits, and Beyoncé’s hit single “Hold Up” might be the most surreal example of the phenomenon.
“Hold Up” is one of Beyoncé’s most popular songs to this date, which is an accolade that’s hard to fully grasp given how monolithic her discography is. The track won the Grammy for Best Solo Pop Performance in 2017 and is one of the standout records from her sixth album, Lemonade.
In 2014, DJ Diplo and Vampire Weekend frontman, Ezra Koenig recorded a zygotic form of the track. This infantile iteration of “Hold Up” was hinged on Diplo’s sample of a staccato guitar line from Andy Williams’ 1963 tune, “Can’t Get Used To Losing You.” Koenig wrote a hook around the sample, which survived through the release of Beyoncé’s final product, where he interpolated the refrain of early-2000s indie rock smash “Maps” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Koenig tweeted the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ line in 2011 when he planned to eventually turn it into a Vampire Weekend song. Koenig made a quick tweak, changing “wait, they don’t love you like I love you” to “hold up, they don’t love you like I love you.” Replacing one word with two, Koenig took the words of Karen O and turned them into one of this millennium’s biggest hits.
Koenig and Diplo’s demo made its way to Beyoncé, who enjoyed it and sent it to other songwriters MNEK and megaproducer Emile Haynie to develop the track further. After Haynie introduced Beyoncé to indie folk artist Father John Misty, Queen B contacted the Maryland native for a songwriting collaboration. Misty said he wrote the chorus and first verse to the now-double-platinum song.
Incorporating unforeseen collaborations from a diverse group of musicians, “Hold Up” was nearly complete after Misty’s benefaction, but one crucial aspect was still yet to be added. On the song’s outro, one more songwriter is added as Beyoncé interpolates Soulja Boy’s “Turn My Swag On.” Borrowing lyrics from the rap hit, twice Beyoncé sings, “I hop up out my bed and get my swag on// I look in the mirror, say, ‘What's up?’/ What's up, what's up, what's up.”
The finished masterpiece that is “Hold Up” was finally released on May 27, 2016, years after its conception. The song has an NBA roster’s worth of names on it, a staggering 15, but the most notable contributors include Ezra Koenig, Karen O, Diplo, Father John Misty, Soulja Boy, Doc Pomus, and of course, Beyoncé.