Songfacts®:

• The lead single from Jess Glynne's debut album, I Cry When I Laugh, the song was premiered in January 2015. "It's one of those songs that just kind of makes you feel at ease," she told USA Today. "It was inspired by my severe anxiety. Me and my friend wrote it together."
  
  "It's just about somebody being there when you feel insecure in a situation and that person is just there to make you feel better," she added. "I love it, it's got me written all over it."
• The song debuted at peak position on the UK singles chart. It was Jess Glynne's first chart-topper as a solo artist, following her two #1s as a guest vocalist in 2014 on Clean Bandit's "Rather Be" and Route 94's "My Love."
• The song's country twang wasn't intentional. Jess Glynne told The Idolator: "I actually wrote it with Jack [Patterson] from Clean Bandit and this girl called Janee [Bennett] who I pretty much write all my songs with. When we started it, me and Janee had this idea before we even got to the studio of the line "Darling, hold my hand." It wasn't originally like, "Oh we're thinking country." But when we put the chords down and started singing, it kind of sounds a little bit like Dolly Parton's '9 to 5.' I later on realized that, but it wasn't done on purpose."
• Asked by HMV.com where the I Cry When I Laugh album title came from, Jess Glynne replied: "Well I do actually cry when I laugh it's a known fact about me, the minute I laugh I cry. It's a fact about me and the album is my journey so it fits pretty well. The album goes come from heartbreak to happiness so it also relates to the emotions of the album pretty well too."
• The song featured in the 2015 "Family Gatherings" Coca Cola commercial.
• In late 2015, budget airline Jet2 started using the song for their ads for their Jet2holidays, and as various in-aircraft announcements with Jet2.com. Ironically, Glynne is a very nervous traveler and scared of flying.
• Jet2's upbeat slogan "Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday," paired with "Hold My Hand," was meant to sell dream getaways, but TikTok had other plans. The audio went viral as a soundtrack to vacation disasters: drunken mishaps, chaotic airport scenes, and full-blown fights at 30,000 feet. The cheery tagline became an ironic shorthand for holidays gone horribly wrong.
  
  The meme got so big, Jess Glynne embraced it. She started closing her live sets with "Hold My Hand," fans chanting the Jet2 version of the lyrics before the chorus hit. Some even showed up waving homemade signs that read, "Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday."