Songfacts®:

• If Guided By Voices were ever going to have a hit, it would have been "Hold On Hope," a mellow tune about persevering through the dark times, impelled by the promise of hope. Most Guided By Voices songs have more grit, but this is one Michael Bolton could sing convincingly.
  
  It was written by GBV leader Robert Pollard, and it came to him in a dream. He didn't form a strong connection to the song and thought it was too syrupy for consumption, but he made a demo and delivered it to Ric Ocasek, who was producing the group's 1999 album Do The Collapse. Not surprisingly, Ocasek jumped on it, and even added a string section.
  
  "I apologized to Ric because I thought it might be a little cheesy and slightly embarrassing because it came from a dream, but he said, 'No, it's the power ballad that radio is looking for' and that really scared me," Pollard explained to Songfacts. "I ended up liking it later down the line, especially when Glen Campbell covered and validated it. I guess it's got a good message, I don't know. It's not very punk, is it?"
• Guided By Voices did most of their own production before enlisting Ric Ocasek of The Cars for their Do The Collapse album. This was an abrupt change in direction - the band didn't adorn their songs and usually recorded very quickly, giving them an unfiltered sound. This worked well in the mid-'90s when that gritty sound was all the rage in rock, but by 1999 a more mature sound was in, so songs needed more production value to reach the radio. Ocasek was the right man for the job, but the songs didn't connect, in part because Guided By Voices weren't known for this kind of music. "Hold On Hope" and "Teenage FBI" were both released as single, but neither charted.
• Glen Campbell's version of this song appears on his 2011 album Ghost On The Canvas, recorded after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. The song appears in his 2014 documentary Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me.
• "Hold On Hope" appears in the 2002 Scrubs episode "My Occurrence," and in the 2000 movie Attraction.
• Glen Campbell may have passed away in 2017 after battling Alzheimer's, but his music continues to touch hearts. To keep his legacy shimmering bright, a new album featuring posthumous duets with a star-studded cast was released. Titled Glen Campbell Duets: Ghost on the Canvas Sessions, the project reimagines Campbell's final studio album, Ghost on the Canvas.
  
  A glimpse of what fans could expect came with the January 26, 2024 release of "Hold On Hope," featuring Eric Church. The new version blends Campbell's original vocals with Church's, creating a powerful duet that carries the song's message of perseverance through hardship.