Father John Misty Explains His Writing Credit On Beyoncé’s “Hold Up”

Father John Misty Explains His Writing Credit On Beyoncé’s “Hold Up”

We already know how Animal Collective came to have a writing credit on Beyoncé’s Lemonade track “6 Inch.” We already know how Ezra Koenig came to have a writing credit on “Hold Up.” And now we know how Father John Misty came to have a writing credit on “Hold Up” too.

Last night and earlier today, Josh Tillman tweeted out two different stories of how the unlikely event of Father John Misty cowriting a Beyoncé track with Ezra Koenig and Diplo came about, both of them clearly joking fabrications on par with his “Lou Reed came to me in a dream and told me to take down my Taylor Swift covers” yarn. But now, as Pitchfork reports, he’s detailed the real story, which is considerably less interesting than the fake story, but, you know, not fake. As he explains in his statement, he wrote the melody and lyrics of the song’s first verse and refrain:

About a year and half ago, my friend Emile Haynie played Beyonce some of my music, along with some tunes I’ve written for other people, back when she was looking for collaborators for the record…Pretty soon after they sent along the demo for “Hold Up”, which was just like a minute of the sample and the hook. I’m pretty sure they were just looking for lyrics, but I went crazy and recorded a verse melody and refrain too that, unbelievably – when you consider how ridiculous my voice sounds on the demo – ended up making the record – right between picking up the baseball bat and decapitating the fire hydrant.

I was mostly kind of in the dark, my involvement with the record kind of ends with me just sending off the demo, it wasn’t until she came to my Coachella set in 2015 and told me personally it had made the record that I really had anything concrete with which to convince my friends that I hadn’t actually gone insane.

And here’s what definitely didn’t happen:

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