Beyoncé’s music video “Hold Up” seems simplistic at first: a woman, destroying cars in a fit of jealousy while debating on if she is jealous, crazy or a combination of both. Beyoncé’s carefree attitude after being released from her submerged room of rebirth comes off as being crazy, swinging a baseball bat into car after car with a grin on her face, much to the amusement of onlookers. Her carefree fit excites a group of children that, as a result of Queen B breaking a fire hydrant, get to have a water war, complete with squirt guns and dancing. When an artist creates a music video, the scenes depicted either add deeper meaning to lyrics, or contradict them. In Beyoncé’s case, her video creates a deeper meaning with its images used and the actions taken by the people featured. This imagery creates a deeper meaning to the poem that Beyoncé speaks and her song lyrics. Beyoncé’s music video “Hold Up” reveals a deeper meaning to her lyrics and illustrates an underlying story of rebirth. The images of her isolation in her submerged room, resulting in her rebirth, to clips of Beyoncé taking a baseball bat to cars, uncaringly destroying her already run down New Orleans town and the carefree people in it accentuate and create images of a theme of rebirth. 

The beginning of Beyoncé’s video features a submerged room, with Queen B herself floating around in it. Images of her undressing, staring at her former self, praying and then becoming possessed create a story of rebirth. At one point a bible is seen floating by, after she has what looks like a fit of possession. This is shown and accentuated by dark and muted colors that also imitate her mother's womb and create a feeling of unhappiness and boredom. The simplicity of the room she is in helps to identify the fact that what is happening is related to her personally, not just outside objects. The final shot in this section of the video is Beyoncé opening a set of large double doors and returning to the world in a sea of water after her rebirth. These images all tie into an overarching view of Beyoncé’s time in the womb before her dramatic entrance to the world. The combination of the muted and dark womblike colors with personal additions such as the bible and Beyoncé’s own pieces of clothing and jewelry, all trapped in a room before changing and being released gives the viewer a look into Beyoncé’s emotions and her change before she entered the world again, 

The scene then changes, which is shown by a contrast of colors, dark greys to bright yellow, which creates a change in mood for the viewer. When Beyoncé emerges from the room where her rebirth took place, she is wearing a bright yellow dress. The color yellow can be seen to symbolize rebirth, optimism and a carefree attitude. For example, the brightness of the yellow sun is often used as a symbol for joy, or the new beginning a day may bring. Even the smile emoji on Facebook, which is a very commonly used symbol for happiness, is yellow.  Beyoncé sports a smile as she takes a baseball bat to the windows of every car on the New Orleans street. She stands out against a background of muted colors and poverty, which highlights her and her actions, breaking the windows of already old and damaged cars. The contrast between Beyoncé and the dark colors in her background shows a representation of her starting new, with the background colors being past before her rebirth. Women keying and breaking the windows of men's cars symbolizes the man wronging them or cheating on them. Beyoncé goes car to car, not sparing one, taking out windshields and pounding the hoods in with her baseball bat. This clip could symbolize her vengeance against all the people that have wronged her, her getting back at the world after her rebirth. Although Beyoncé’s actions are aggressive and frightening, the smile on her face makes a viewer feel more at ease and amused by what she is doing, which in turn creates a different mood aside from if she was just smashing in car windows without smiling and casually sauntering down the street. At one point we see Beyoncé from the eyes of a security camera on a shop before she takes her baseball bat to it after giving it a flirty look. The look that she gives the camera is significant because it shows that she is amused by what she is doing and does not care about the damage that she has done. Also, this image symbolizes how Beyoncé feels being in the eyes of society and the media all the time, and she uncaringly destroyed their way of seeing her. 

More often than not, in the background of the music video there are people living out their everyday life. This is especially true in Beyoncé’s video where women laugh as she breaks car windows, and men stand on the street corner and stare at her in her revealing and bright dress. The attitudes of these people in Beyoncé’s community show that even though bad things are happening, life goes on and there is good and humor in everything. This carefree attitude of both the community and Beyoncé brings an aspect of happiness and fun to her rebirth. A man is pictured riding down the street popping a wheelie on an ATV, and when the shot is taken frame by frame a viewer can see he is wearing a shirt with the graphic “In memory of when I gave a fuck.” This image may be slightly aggressive, but exemplifies Beyoncé’s transition, before her rebirth she did “give a fuck” but the graphic on the shirt shows that those days are over. This clip also shows that Beyoncé isn't the only one with this carefree attitude, it is also shared by the residents of her New Orleans community. Beyoncé smiles as she breaks open a fire hydrant, which results in a spray of water attracting children from the neighborhood. The kids all smile and laugh as they dance and play with squirt guns, showing that even though something was destroyed, there is always a chance to make the best of a situation. These images bring to light the fact that even though Beyoncé is not doing her community any good by breaking things, they make the best of these situations and laugh and promote a carefree spirit, one that Beyoncé did not have before her rebirth. 

Beyoncé’s music video “Hold Up” reveals a deeper meaning to her lyrics and illustrates an underlying story of rebirth. The images of her isolation in her submerged room, undressing and experiencing what looks to be similar to a seizure, in addition to the muted colors that bear a striking similarity to the tones of a child in a mothers womb, all lead to Beyoncé’s rebirth into a New Orleans town. This combined with clips of Beyoncé taking a baseball bat to cars, uncaringly destroying her already run down New Orleans town and the carefree people in it accentuate and create images of a theme of renewal into a stronger and more independent woman. From Beyoncé’s rebirth and encounter with demons at the beginning of the video, to her experience dancing in the spray of a broken fire hydrant with children from her city in New Orleans, there is a very obvious theme of rebirth to a more carefree person in the music video. Every image and action of the characters in the video add a deeper meaning to the lyrics by using changes in colors and the attitudes of Beyoncé and the people in her community. 