Hold Me Tight Or Don't

Album: MANIA (2017)
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Songfacts®:

  • The fourth single to be released from Mania, this reggae-tinged tune started with a vocal hook that vocalist Patrick Stump came up with. Bassist Pete Wentz told Pop Buzz:

    "I wish I could say it was a conscious decision. I think it's just like, especially with 'Hold Me Tight', this was not a single really when we were writing it. It's just like we had the hook, kind of, the little hook vocal he did, and then we created a different music bed underneath it and it kind of became more of a single. So it was just like this weird little thing he does. Patrick's one of those guys who's like, um…he's a bit like Mr Magoo where he just, like, does stuff and it just is pretty amazing. And you ask him to do it again and he's like 'Well I wasn't even thinking about it.' The things he hums, they're accidental. Or maybe they're on purpose but they come off very accidental – this one in particular."
  • Several of the song's lines were teased in the end credits for the music video for Fall Out Boy's previous single, "The Last of the Real Ones." They included the lyrics "when your stitch comes loose" and, "I took too many hits off this memory."
  • The Brendan Walter and Mel Soria-directed video features Fall Out Boy playing the song in the middle of a Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebration. The directors added a love story in between shots of the band playing for a crowd of Mexican revelers.

    Pete Wentz told Kerrang: "I've always wanted to do a Day Of The Dead-themed video. We've just never had the right song until now. The wild thing about the video was that Patrick had the flu and he was throwing up everywhere at the same time, so we had literally maybe one take where he was okay. It was quite miraculous we pulled off the performance part!"

    Vocalist Patrick Stump added: "The day of the shoot I felt insanely bad. I hadn't been that sick in decades and I didn't even know if I'd make the shoot, as I couldn't drive. When they went, 'They're ready for you, Patrick,' I got sick right on cue and then I'm hurling. I did maybe four takes in 10 minutes and right after every one I was running to be sick!"
  • Patrick Stump told Kerrang the story of the track: "It was a thing I messed around with and didn't think anything of. It was sat in a pile of demos, then somebody rediscovered it months later and was like, 'What's this?' And I was like, 'That's the song I sent you six months ago."

    "Pete and I have been messing around with reggae for a while," he added. "It's in that spirit of experimenting and being like, 'F--k it, we want to try it!"
  • Wentz told Billboard magazine: "The song is basically love from like, (Curb Your Enthusiasm star) Larry David's perspective. It's very neurotic, you know?"
  • Bassist Pete Wentz is Fall Out Boy's wordsmith and Patrick Stump says this song contains a "quintessential Pete lyric."

    I wanna sleep on every piece of fuzz
    And stuffing that comes out of you


    Stump told ABC Radio: "That one stood out to me as, like, 'I don't even know if I get it. I'm gonna sing that, though,. It just feels like [Pete], and it feels like his way of saying things. You read that and you're like, 'I think he's trying to be romantic?' But there's something really natural in that."
  • MANIA was Fall Out Boy's fourth (nonconsecutive) #1 on the albums chart. They first hit the apex in 2007 with their third album, Infinity On High.

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