Oct. 5, 2025
TIK TOK'S VIRAL HITS -Jess Glynne - "Hold My Hand" (Travel2 Holidays song)
Welcome back to Hitmaker Chronicles! I'm your host, Garrett Fisher. Today we're examining a unique phenomenon - a 2015 UK chart-topper that became 2025's undisputed Song of the Summer through an airline commercial and TikTok chaos. We'll trace how Jess Glynne's "Hold My Hand" went from Motown-influenced dance-pop triumph to the soundtrack of 80 billion vacation disasters, thanks to a British budget airline and Gen Z's genius for ironic juxtaposition. Sometimes the greatest songs have multiple lives, each one stranger than the last. Let's explore how a decade-old anthem became the sound of summer schadenfreude.
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Callaroga Shark Media, September twenty twenty five. I'm Garrett Fischer.
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And if you had told jess Glynn in March twenty fifteen,
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as her song hold My Hand sat atop the UK
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charts for three straight weeks that a decade later it
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would become globally famous because of a budget airline commercial
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and people getting chased by camels, she probably would have
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thought you were having a stroke. But here we are.
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According to TikTok's official data, hold My Hand is the
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undisputed global number one song of the summer twenty twenty five.
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Not a new release, not a fresh remix, but a
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ten year old track that's been playing is bording music
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on Jet two flights since late twenty fifteen, transformed into
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the ultimate soundtrack for vacation disasters, relationship fails, and the
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general chaos of trying to have a good time in
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an increasingly unhinged world. To understand this bizarre journey, we
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need to go back to twenty fourteen. Jessica Hannah Glynn,
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a North London Jewish girl whose grandfather changed the family
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name from Goldstein, was working in music management networking with
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producers when Clean bandit needed a vocalist for Rather Be.
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That song went to number one. Then Route ninety four
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needed someone for My Love, also number one. Suddenly, the
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girl who'd walked out of X Factor auditions at fifteen
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was the most in demand featured artist in British pop.
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For her solo debut, Glenn teamed up with Jin Jin
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Jack Patterson from Clean Bandit and Norwegian songwriter Na Roldsen.
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They created Hold My Hand, a perfect fifth harmony wrapped
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in glossy production, the kind of song that music theorists
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call satisfying and clubgoers call a banger. When it dropped
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in March twenty fifteen, it didn't just hit number one.
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It stayed there for three weeks, out selling its nearest
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competitor by forty thousand units in its first week alone.
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The song itself is deceptively simple, that darling hold My
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Hand hook that DJ Tina Edwards correctly identifies as a
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classic perfect fifth, a musical interval so harmonious it feels complete, inevitable.
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It's dance music that doesn't require dancing, pop that transcends
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its moment, which is probably why Jet two, a Leeds
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based budget airline trying to sell package Holidays to Britz
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licensed it for their commercials starting in late twenty fifteen.
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Enter Zoe Lister, a forty three year old voice actor
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from Cookham, England who's been doing Jet two voiceovers for
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seven years. In late twenty twenty two, she recorded what
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seemed like just another commercial script. Nothing beats a Jet
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two holiday and right now you can save fifty pounds
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off per person. Standard travel advertising copy forgetable except when
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you play it over, hold my hand and blast it
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at British consumers. For three straight years in commercials, in nightclubs,
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even as bording music on actual Jet two flights, something
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interesting happens. It becomes embedded in the national consciousness like
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a splinter you can't remove. The transformation started in November
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twenty twenty four, someone posted a TikTok video of a
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camel chasing them through the desert, set to the jet
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to audio. Three point eight million views. The internet's collective
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light bulb went on. This relentlessly cheerful advertisement was the
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perfect ironic counterpoint to vacation disasters. By summer twenty twenty five,
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it had exploded one point five million TikTok videos, eighty
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billion views. Google searches for Jet two holiday hitting all
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time highs Americans who don't even use the word holiday
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for vacations asking what the hell is a Jet two.
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The genius of the trend is its perfect marriage of
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corporate sincerity and user subversion. Jet two promises affordable paradise.
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TikTokers deliver whitewater rafting disasters, cruise ship evacuations, hotel rooms
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with windows the size of postcards. Jeff Goldbloom creates Jeff
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two Holidays, Mariah Carey posts it before boarding her jet.
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Even Jess Glynn herself performing hold My Hand at concerts,
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has to pause while audiences sing the jet Towo jingle
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back at her. Think about what this means for how
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music works now. A song can have a completely successful
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first life number one for three weeks, certified platinum, then
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get hijacked by a budget airline for a decade, marinating
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in the British subconscious before emerging as a global phenomenon
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through pure ironic displacement. The song hasn't changed, but its
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meaning has been completely recontextualized. Twice, Glenn told Capital FM
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that the resurgence was a massive surprise. Lister meeting Glenn
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for the first time. During the media Frenzy called her
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a super cool megapop star while describing herself as this cheeseball.
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But here's the thing. In twenty twenty five, the cheeseball
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voiceover is arguably more famous than the original song. That's
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not a judgment on quality, it's a statement about how
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culture moves now. When the White House tried to appropriate
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the meme for an immigration enforcement video in July, Glenn
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responded furiously. My music is about love, unity and spreading positivity,
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never about division or hate. But that's the thing about
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releasing art into the world. Once it's out there, you
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don't control what it means anymore. A love song becomes
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a travel jingle, becomes a meme about chaos, becomes a
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political flashpoint. Each iteration adds another layer of meaning, another
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context that can never be fully eraised. What makes Hold
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My Hand the song of Summer twenty twenty five isn't
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the melody, or the lyrics, or even Jess Glynn's powerful voice.
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It's that it's become a shared language for expressing the
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gap between expectation and reality, between what we're sold and
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what we get. Every vacation disaster video set to this
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song is really saying the same thing. We were promised paradise,
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we got chaos, and somehow that's hilarious. It's the most
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twenty twenty five thing imaginable, finding joy in the failure
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of joy. The irony is that musically, Hold my Hand
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Genuinely is a perfect summer song, that perfect fifth harmony,
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the uplifting production, Glenn's soaring vocals. It's engineered for euphoria,
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but maybe that's why it works so well for disaster content.
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The greater the distance between the soundtrack and the reality,
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the funnier it becomes. It's the musical equivalent of laughing
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to keep from crying more in a moment. As I
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record this in September twenty twenty five, Hold My Hand
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is experiencing its third distinct cultural moment, first as a
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UK chart topper, then as inescapable travel advertising, now as
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the ironic anthem of a generation that turns every disappointment
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into content. Each version builds on the last, creating something
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that's simultaneously a love song, a commercial, and a meme
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about the impossibility of happiness. That's not something you can plan,
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that's not something any algorithm could predict that's just the beautiful,
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chaotic way culture evolves. Now. Nothing beats a jet to holiday,
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the ads promise, and in a weird way, they're right.
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Nothing beats it because nothing can compete with our ability
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to transform corporate messaging into collective therapy, to turn a
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budget airlines jingle into a global inside joke about the
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human condition. Ten years from now, hold my Hand might
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mean something else entirely. For now, it means Summer twenty
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twenty five, a season when we all agreed that the
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funniest thing in the world was the gap between what
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we're promised and what we get. Sometimes the best songs
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are the ones that survive long enough to mean something
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their creators never imagined. Hold my Hand isn't just a
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hit anymore. It's a cultural artifact, a linguistic virus, a
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shared reference point for eighty billion moments of recognition. Yes,
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this is my vacation too, Yes this is my life too. Yes,
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nothing beats this beautiful disaster. We're all in together, darling,
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hold my hand. Indeed, we're gonna need it.
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