The 2010s File Feature
Can't Shake You
Can't Shake You — Gloriana (2013) Gloriana was a Nashville group composed of siblings Tom and Rachel Reinert alongside Mike Martinez, who had formed in the l…
01 The Story
Can't Shake You — Gloriana (2013)
Gloriana was a Nashville group composed of siblings Tom and Rachel Reinert alongside Mike Martinez, who had formed in the late 2000s and made an immediate commercial impact with their debut single "Wild at Heart," which reached number five on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart in 2009. Their blend of tight harmony singing, pop production sensibility, and melodic accessibility placed them at a point of intersection between mainstream country and adult contemporary pop that proved commercially productive during the early 2010s. By 2013, they were working on their second studio album and looking for material that could restore their commercial momentum after several years of mixed chart results following their debut success.
"Can't Shake You" was the lead single from their second album, "A Thousand Miles Left Behind," and the group and their label, Emblem Records distributed through Universal Music Group Nashville, positioned it as their clearest bid for mainstream country radio success. The song was written by Nashville professional songwriters with strong track records in the format, and it embodied the group's core commercial strength: vocal harmonies that were richer and more carefully constructed than most country groups of the era, deployed over a production that was accessible without being insipid.
The single was released in late 2012 and entered the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart in early 2013, eventually reaching the top twenty on that chart, representing a meaningful commercial return for the group after the slower-building period that followed their debut. Country radio programmers responded to the track's harmonic complexity and melodic accessibility, and it received strong rotation in the format during the spring and summer of 2013. The song demonstrated Gloriana's ability to deliver polished, hook-driven country that satisfied format requirements without feeling cynically engineered.
The production on "Can't Shake You" was handled by Nathan Chapman, a veteran Nashville producer who had worked extensively with Taylor Swift on her early albums and brought a similar sensibility to Gloriana's material: melodic clarity, clean instrumentation, and vocal arrangements that showcased the performers without burying them in production excess. Chapman's approach suited Gloriana's strengths perfectly, giving the three-part harmonies room to function as the primary sonic attraction of the track rather than as one element among many competing for attention.
The album "A Thousand Miles Left Behind" was released in June 2013 and debuted respectably on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart, confirming that Gloriana retained a meaningful fan base despite the extended gap between their debut and sophomore records. Country music critics noted the quality of the vocal performances throughout the album and acknowledged the group's ability to deliver consistently crafted material, even if some reviews noted that the songwriting occasionally favored polish over grit.
The summer of 2013 was a competitive period on country radio, with artists including Florida Georgia Line, Blake Shelton, and Luke Bryan dominating airplay with a strain of bro-country that leaned heavily into male-voiced anthems about trucks, tailgates, and summer recreation. Gloriana's harmonic sound occupied a different space in the format, one more traditionally rooted in vocal ensemble tradition and less invested in the sonic maximalism that characterized the dominant trend. This positioning meant the group's ceiling was somewhat constrained by format dynamics but also that they served an audience segment that was underserved by the prevailing sounds of that moment.
Live performances of "Can't Shake You" during the 2013 promotional cycle showcased the group's genuine appeal as a harmony act. Rachel Reinert's lead vocals in particular drew attention from critics and audiences, and her vocal quality was frequently cited as one of the underappreciated assets of the contemporary country landscape. Tom Reinert's supporting vocal work and Martinez's contributions created a harmonic texture that was difficult to replicate in live settings but that Gloriana executed with notable consistency.
The song contributed to a period of stability for the group that allowed them to maintain their profile in country music through the mid-2010s, even as the format underwent significant transformations in both sound and audience demographic. While Gloriana never recaptured the immediate commercial impact of "Wild at Heart," tracks like "Can't Shake You" demonstrated their capacity for sustained professional quality and their loyalty to a vocal-centered approach that distinguished them from many contemporaries. The track remains a reliable representative of their catalog and of a moment in country music when vocal harmony traditions still commanded mainstream radio airplay alongside the louder production trends of the era.
02 Song Meaning
Persistence of Feeling and the Harmony Tradition in "Can't Shake You"
"Can't Shake You" addresses the experience of being unable to move past a romantic attachment despite time and effort. The narrator acknowledges that a relationship has reached some kind of endpoint but finds that the emotional residue refuses to clear. Thoughts of the other person return unbidden, feelings persist when they have no practical reason to, and the simple promise to oneself that things will eventually fade proves harder to keep than anticipated. This is familiar emotional territory in country music, where the persistence of romantic feeling across time and distance has been a central subject for generations of songwriters.
What distinguishes the treatment in "Can't Shake You" is the particular emotional register the song chooses: neither the rage of a spurned lover nor the sentimentality of someone wallowing in nostalgia, but something more sober and more honest about the involuntary nature of emotional attachment. The narrator is not celebrating the inability to let go as a romantic virtue but acknowledging it as a simple fact of experience, something that happens to people regardless of their intentions or rational commitments. That acknowledgment gives the song a maturity that elevates it above simple heartbreak convention.
The vocal arrangement is integral to the song's meaning in ways that extend beyond mere sonic preference. Gloriana's three-part harmonies create a musical texture in which multiple voices express the same emotional state simultaneously, reinforcing the sense that what the song describes is not an idiosyncratic personal failure but something widely shared. When harmonies blend on a line about being unable to escape a feeling, the blending itself becomes a kind of community of experience, suggesting that many voices know this particular kind of ache.
This connection between harmony singing and emotional universality is one of the oldest principles of vocal ensemble music in American popular tradition, running from shape-note hymn singing through barbershop and close-harmony country groups like the Everly Brothers and the Eagles. Gloriana consciously positioned themselves within this tradition, and "Can't Shake You" demonstrates why that positioning was artistically valid: the emotional content genuinely benefits from the harmonic treatment.
Within the context of Gloriana's catalog, the song represents the fullest expression of their core artistic identity. Their greatest musical asset was always the quality of their collective vocal performance, and "Can't Shake You" was built precisely around that asset. The production does not attempt to compensate for any weakness with production tricks but trusts the harmonies to carry the emotional weight of the song, which is exactly the right creative decision given the material and the performers.
The song also speaks to the particular emotional vulnerability of people who have loved with real commitment and find that the traces of that love do not simply evaporate when circumstances change. That vulnerability is not fashionable in an era that valorizes emotional self-sufficiency and rapid recovery, and part of what makes the song resonant is its refusal to pretend that moving on is as clean or quick as contemporary culture often implies it should be. In acknowledging that some attachments leave marks that do not easily fade, "Can't Shake You" honors the depth and seriousness of the feeling that created them in the first place.
→ More from Gloriana
View all Gloriana hits →
→ More from the 2010s File
View all 2010s hits →
Keep digging