Hold On Hold Out

On the back of the album cover the dedication reads "THIS IS FOR LYNNE."[1] Lynne Sweeney later became Jackson Browne's second wife.

As a possibly logically extreme conclusion to the singer/songwriter confessional trend begun in the early 1970s, critics emphasized this song particularly in their reviews for the album. In the Sept. 4, 1980 issue of Rolling Stone, Kit Rachlis began his review of the album by drawing attention to the song: "Everything that's right and everything that's wrong about Hold Out ... can be found in its climax: the spoken confession at the end of the last cut... Eight minutes long, "Hold On Hold Out" is the LP's anthem, its farewell address and would-be summation. With Technicolor clarity, the drive of the drums, the zing of the string synthesizer and the shoulders-thrust-back momentum of the piano jump out at you — big and bright and basic. So the drama is real when the instruments drop back and Browne stops singing and starts speaking. It's a measure of both the grandiosity and simplicity of Browne's intentions that this album comes down to his saying — without the aid of melody or harmony — "I love you." And it's a measure of Hold Out's failure that these words sound flat, forced, even selfish: a meaningful private act made embarrassing by its public expression. Also, the words are a letdown, since they follow the funniest, most heartbreakingly romantic line on the record."

Charlie Ricci at Bloggerhythms said in 2011 that the song's "centerpiece was an almost schmaltzy spoken passage in the middle that was very much not the kind of thing Browne normally put on vinyl."[4]

William Ruhlmann at Allmusic said that "'Hold on Hold Out,' the traditional big, long, last song on the album, was awkwardly, not winningly, intimate."[5]