"Hold Each Other"

"It's sort of a big coming out song for me."
Chad King

A Great Big World's song "Hold Each Other" (listen/watch) started as a "standard love song between a man and a woman" when the duo Ian Axel and Chad King wrote the song. Axel asked King how he was going to sing the line "Something happens when I hold her": "Chad, how are you going sing this and deliver it honestly?" For Chad King, who had always sung about girls "because it's just what people do", a personal struggle started.

"I was like, 'I can't do this, no one does this, it doesn't feel comfortable, there's no way I can do this. And I thought about it for like two seconds and said, 'I have to do this.' This is my truth, people will respond to that. I know they will and I hope it inspires other people to sing about their own truth or or speak about their own, you know?" (via)



“I think what is really interesting is that I was [at first] uncomfortable singing it as ‘Something happens when I hold him. The fact that I was uncomfortable singing it, as someone who’s gay, it showed me and Ian that we have to spread this message because I shouldn’t be scared to say what’s in pop music. It isn’t done in pop music often, not in this way. The fact that I was scared to say that showed us that we needed to do it.”

"After that first day when Ian changed the lyric it became second nature. The initial switching of that pronoun, I’m not used to seeing [in pop music]. Even when we’re writing, there will be some stream-of-consciousness moments where I’m singing about 'she' and 'her' and 'the girl,' but in no way do I actually feel those things. I feel that it’s a habitual thing that I learned over the years listening to pop music." 

"I thought we would have had a little more resistance to 'Hold Each Other', especially getting it played on radio. There have been a couple stations in the South that have refused to play it because they feel it’s too progressive. But I’m OK with that, because it means we’re doing something right. If they can’t play a song like this, which is only about love, if they can’t play a song about love then I don’t want to listen to their station." (via)

"Everyone is gay" - a hilarious song:



photograph via