The 2010s File Feature
Shake Up Christmas
Chart History and Recording Background of "Shake Up Christmas" by Train Train, the San Francisco-based rock band founded in 1993, had one of the more unusual…
01 The Story
Chart History and Recording Background of "Shake Up Christmas" by Train
Train, the San Francisco-based rock band founded in 1993, had one of the more unusual commercial trajectories in American rock during the 2000s and early 2010s. After achieving major success with the single "Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me)" and the album Drops of Jupiter in 2001, the band experienced a quieter commercial period before their 2009 album Save Me, San Francisco and its single "Hey, Soul Sister" reignited their mainstream visibility with remarkable force. "Hey, Soul Sister" became one of the best-selling digital singles in recording history and spent months at the top of the Adult Pop Songs chart, positioning Train as one of the most commercially durable rock acts of their generation.
The success of "Hey, Soul Sister" created significant commercial momentum that the band and their label, Columbia Records, sought to extend through strategic releases. In 2010, Train recorded "Shake Up Christmas" for the global Coca-Cola Company's annual holiday advertising campaign. The song was commissioned as original music for a television commercial series that Coca-Cola had developed as part of its long-running tradition of connecting the brand to Christmas imagery and sentiment. The relationship between music and advertising had evolved considerably by this period, and commissions of this type, when executed with genuine musical quality, could achieve independent commercial success beyond their advertising origin.
"Shake Up Christmas" was written by lead singer Pat Monahan along with collaborators including Espen Lind, who had written material for Beyonce and other major pop acts, and Amund Bjorklund. The song was produced to have the warm, anthemic quality of a contemporary Christmas song while drawing on Train's established sound, characterized by Monahan's expressive tenor, melodic guitar work, and orchestral elements layered beneath a rock rhythm section. The production aimed to feel both festive and broadly accessible, capable of functioning in a television commercial context while also standing alone as a piece of music.
The advertising campaign in which the song appeared was international in scope, with the Coca-Cola Christmas advertisements being aired in dozens of countries and representing one of the most significant annual advertising investments the company made. The use of original music by a recognizable commercial artist gave the campaign an elevated musical profile compared to years when original compositions by less prominent artists had been used. The song was released as a digital single to coincide with the campaign's launch, allowing listeners who heard it in the advertisements to purchase or stream the recording independently.
On the Billboard Hot 100, "Shake Up Christmas" appeared for one week, debuting at number 99 during the chart week of January 8, 2011. This single-week Hot 100 presence reflected the dynamics of a song that had received its primary commercial exposure during the holiday season through advertising rather than traditional radio promotion; once the Christmas window closed, the song naturally exited the broader chart landscape. However, the song achieved more substantial chart success on holiday-specific and adult contemporary format charts during the peak of the holiday season in December 2010.
The song's commercial performance was also measured in part by the scale of its advertising context. The Coca-Cola Christmas campaign generated hundreds of millions of global impressions, and the song was heard by a substantially larger audience than its chart position suggested. This kind of non-chart commercial exposure represented a model for music monetization that was becoming increasingly common as brands invested in original music content and as artists recognized the value of commercial partnerships that could fund recording and promotion outside the traditional label infrastructure.
Critically, "Shake Up Christmas" was received as a competent and appealing piece of holiday music that effectively served its purpose as both an advertising tool and a standalone song. The song was praised for avoiding the clichés that often plagued commissioned holiday music while maintaining sufficient festive character to feel appropriate for the season. Train's consistent production quality and Monahan's reliable vocal delivery ensured that the song met a high baseline of craft regardless of its commercial origins.
The song has enjoyed consistent digital streaming returns in subsequent holiday seasons, becoming a minor perennial addition to Christmas playlists. This pattern of returning annual commercial activity is characteristic of successful holiday recordings, which have a natural cyclical relevance that most pop songs do not. In this respect, "Shake Up Christmas" has performed in a manner consistent with other Train recordings from this period, demonstrating the band's ability to produce music that finds and retains an audience even in the absence of continued active promotion. The song remains a distinctive example of brand-commissioned music crossing over into genuine independent cultural utility.
02 Song Meaning
Themes and Meaning in "Shake Up Christmas" by Train
"Shake Up Christmas" is a celebratory holiday song built around the invitation to embrace the joy and transformation of the Christmas season. The central metaphor is one of shaking off routine and welcoming a period of heightened emotion, connection, and festivity. The narrator encourages listeners to let the spirit of the season disrupt the ordinary rhythms of life in a positive way, framing Christmas as an occasion for the kind of emotional openness and generosity that everyday existence often crowds out.
The song participates in the commercial holiday music tradition of using the Christmas season as a symbol for emotional possibility. Within this tradition, Christmas functions not primarily as a religious observance but as a cultural occasion associated with reunion, warmth, giving, and the renewal of bonds that have been weakened or neglected during the rest of the year. Songs within this tradition invite listeners to suspend the defenses and preoccupations of ordinary life and permit themselves a seasonal episode of genuine sentiment. "Shake Up Christmas" is a sincere and energetically delivered contribution to this tradition.
The song's origins as a commission for Coca-Cola's annual Christmas advertising campaign are relevant to its meaning in two senses. First, they explain the particular warmth and accessibility of the song's emotional territory: commissioned holiday music is designed to be broadly inclusive rather than personally specific, capable of resonating with the widest possible audience across demographic and cultural differences. Second, the Coca-Cola context aligned the song with one of the most recognizable bodies of Christmas imagery in modern commercial culture, the brand's decades-long tradition of associating itself with polar bears, generosity, and festive cheer.
The invitation to "shake up" the holiday suggests an awareness that Christmas can become rote or perfunctory, a series of obligations rather than a genuine occasion for feeling. The song gently resists this tendency, calling for a reinvigoration of the season's emotional core. This theme of rediscovering joy within a familiar occasion is a standard element of holiday music's emotional repertoire, but Train's delivery gives it a specific energy that prevents the sentiment from feeling hollow. Pat Monahan's vocal performance is characterized by the kind of earnest commitment that distinguishes sincere celebration from manufactured enthusiasm.
The international context of the Coca-Cola campaign gave the song's themes a particular resonance. Because the advertising campaign ran in dozens of countries and cultures with varied relationships to Christmas, the song's emotional content needed to function at a level of generality that transcended specifically cultural or religious meanings. The emphasis on light, warmth, gathering, and joy rather than on specifically Christian or American cultural imagery allowed the song to travel successfully across this diverse context while retaining sufficient emotional specificity to feel like a real piece of music rather than generic mood filler.
In the broader context of Train's catalog, "Shake Up Christmas" represents a moment of commercial pragmatism aligned with genuine seasonal affection. The band's willingness to engage with the commissioned holiday format reflects an understanding of music's multiple functions in commercial culture: as art, as entertainment, as advertising, and as seasonal ritual. The song's continued presence in holiday playlists each year suggests that it has achieved the most a seasonal commission can aspire to: genuine affection from the audiences who return to it annually, independent of the advertising context that first brought it to their attention.
→ More from the 2010s File
View all 2010s hits →
Keep digging