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The Lumineers’ Friends Told Them This Early Demo ‘Sounded Like S***’, but Here’s Why They Knew They Had to Record It Anyway

The Lumineers knew they “had something” with “Ho Hey”, even though their friends said the demo sounded like “s***.”

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The Lumineers’ song “Ho Hey” is, arguably, one of the biggest songs of the 2010s. It’s almost single-handedly responsible for the chokehold that stomp-clap folk-pop had on that era of music. Hilariously, the band once confessed that friends told them an early demo of the song “sounded like s***,” but they knew they had to record it anyway.

In a 2025 editorial for The Guardian, Lumineers members Jeremiah Fraites and Wesley Schultz shared some backstory on the hit tune. After reflecting on how, in their early days, playing “original” tunes would send audience members “for a cigarette break or to play billiards,” Fraites explained what made “Ho Hey” stand out in the set of mostly cover songs.

“After we moved to Denver, we would do 14-hour drives to play in New Mexico or Nebraska. The journeys were killing us, and we were losing money on gas, so we needed songs that could really grab people,” Fraites said. “Because ‘Ho Hey’ was acoustic, we could unplug our instruments, physically leave the stage, and go out into the audience.”

“Initially, Wes created a fragment of it, then we worked on the song in my parents’ attic like crazy,” he went on to share. “At one point, it was heavier, like a White Stripes version with driving guitar.”

“At the same time, I was learning about home recording, so we burned a raw version of ‘Ho Hey’ and six other songs onto 200 CDs,” Fraites added, then revealing how it went over. “Our friends would say stuff like: ‘You should rerecord it. It sounds like s***, but I listen to it 30 times a day.’”

Their friends’ obsession with “ho hey” let The Lumineers know that they “had something” with the song

Schultz also weighed in on “Ho Hey” and shared some insight into how and why he wrote the tune. “I wrote ‘Ho Hey’ about these experiences. I had the beginnings of another song that was going to be called ‘Everyone Requires a Plan’, but it had no words or melody.”

“Once I started strumming it again, ‘Ho Hey’ just poured out of me,” he continued. “Looking back, I was writing about two heartbreaks at the same time. A person had recently broken up with me, and I was also leaving New York and moving to Denver – breaking up with the city that I thought held all my dreams. I felt steamrollered by both events.”

The songwriter then added, “The opening lines are me trying to convince myself that striving to become a successful musician was a noble pursuit: I had been ‘trying to do it right’ and ‘living a lonely life.’ The hook is pure defiance: you might have broken up with me, but ‘I belong with you, you belong with me.”

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