In 2012, the Lumineers scored a breakthrough hit with their folk-rock single, “Ho Hey.” The track quickly became one of the defining songs of the early aughts, carrying on the wave of feel-good Americana music led by predecessors Mumford & Sons and Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros. “Ho Hey” became a fixture of countless iPod playlists, commercials, and even Taylor Swift setlists during her “Red” tour. While the song’s ubiquity arguably contributed to its steep decline in popularity, for a while, it was a smash hit.
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Indeed, it’s impossible to say how many social media captions, marriage proposals, and countless other romantic gestures co-opted the Lumineers’ lyrics, I belong with you, you belong with me, you’re my sweetheart. But surprisingly, the song’s origins are anything but lovey dovey.
A Not-So-Romantic Love Song About Being a Struggling Artist
The Lumineers’ 2012 hit “Ho Hey” has just enough lyrical snippets for people to assume it’s a love song. However, co-writer Wesley Schultz felt anything but romantic when he wrote it. In a March 2025 interview with The Guardian, Schultz described going through two major life changes at once. “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,” he recalled. “I felt steamrolled by both events.”
“The opening lines are me trying to convince myself that striving to become a successful musician was a noble pursuit,” he continued. “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.”
While Schultz’s romantic relationship might not have worked out, he was determined to revive his relationship with music. Even the song’s titular chant, Ho, hey, was a way to reconnect with the audience. “We were moving away from bar band covers to doing our own songs,” Schultz explained. “So, shouting, Ho, hey!, from the stage got people’s attention. We were shouting to be heard. Then, suddenly, everyone started listening.”
The Lumineers Likened Their Hit To a Fine Italian Dish
Wesley Schultz isn’t wrong—by the end of 2012, everyone was listening. After debuting on the Billboard Hot 100 at a modest No. 90, the track creeped up the chart until it peaked at No. 3, where it would remain in the top ten for an impressive 14 weeks. It would hold the No. 1 position on the Billboard Rock Songs chart for 18 weeks. The Lumineers’ ability to blend multiple genres for “Ho Hey” garnered them spots on contemporary, pop, country, rock, and alternative charts, making the song virtually inescapable in the early aughts.
And that’s exactly what songwriters Schultz and Jeremiah Fraites wanted: an inescapable song. From their attention-grabbing chants to the acoustic arrangement that let the band unplug their instruments and walk into the crowd, “Ho Hey” wasn’t just a testament to defiant love. It was a testament of a band determined to get you to give their music a chance by any means necessary. After burning a rough mix of the song to CDs that they distributed to their friends, they realized the loose arrangement added even more charm. “Our friends would say stuff like, ‘You should record it. It sounds like s***, but I listen to it 30 times a day,’” Freight told The Guardian.
“We recorded a studio version in some woods north of Seattle, trying to recreate the sound of my boots stomping on a wooden stage, which we had liked at an open mic,” Fraites told The Guardian. “There’s no bass. It’s a cello pizzicato, which we made louder. The song is like Italian cooking. There are so few elements that every ingredient needs to be perfect. The version of “Ho Hey” that became a hit is very similar to the one on that first burned CD.”
Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/WireImage
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