Train - Shake up Christmas

Fairly important: the formatting on this post goes to hell in most feeds, and it will be best read at ericonthecharts.blogspot.com

And you even put "Ho Ho Ho" in the chorus.

Train
Shake Up Christmas
Christmas
#99 (Low)
Dec 30, 2010
Train
Butch Walker

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Oh shit, don't tell me Sugar Ray's back.

No... okay... it's just Train. I'm not sure it's less painful, really-- it's always hard to listen to white guys who developed their idea of “soulful” vocals from years of intense Sublime fandom. It takes a very special band to marry a song that missed the cut from a 1996 Jock Rock compilation to Christmas lyrics, I suppose.

Writing Christmas songs, in general, is a bad idea for any modern musician-- most, like “Shake Up Christmas,” will hit cut-out bins on December 26^th and never be heard from again. In the rare instance a modern pop star's Christmas song sticks, it's usually a tragic event for the world of music... I'm pretty sure when George Carlin said “The wrong two Beatles died first,” he'd just listened to McCartney's “Wonderful Christmas Time,” a song that can be counted as a crime against humanity.

It sounds like the band's hedging its bets, too, because there's almost nothing Christmasy in the lyrics-- the verses mention Santa a couple times, but the main theme of the song is that little children wish everything would be nice. That's fine, as far as it goes, but it's such a dim bulb sentiment, and we have the world's cheesiest chorus to wash it down.

Shake it up
Shake up the happiness
Wake it up
Wake up the happiness
Come on, ya'll
It's Christmas time
Ho ho ho
Ho ho ho
It's Christmas time

Since the song starts with our narrator saying he's going to tell us a story that he can't quite remember, the chorus makes sense in perspective: this guy has no idea what he's talking about. There were children, once upon a time, who prayed and hoped for... um... shaking up the happiness? Sure. All over the world.

They pray to Santa, of course... Jesus has no place on secular radio. I sort of assumed Christmas songs would get the kind of pass that's universally applied to country music, but if Train doesn't want to sing about Christ in their Christmas song, so be it. There could be a whole discussion about how the holiday existed long before Christians (where'd that pine tree come from?), but that would take up too much space... what's important is: plenty of non-Christians are pro-Christmas.

What's more important within the context of this song is: Train doesn't know any of that (or if they do, they're not trying to communicate it in this song). This is a thirdhand tale by a guy who's pretty sure he heard about some little girl wishing that the world would be full of happiness, and that she'd be on “Santa's magic list.” Santa's list is magic? Since when? Is that why it needs to be checked twice?

Another problem I have here: I don't think of myself as racist, but can we ban white guys from singing “come on, ya'll” ever again? Also, turning the already weak pop laziness of “oh oh”s into “ho ho ho”s is a pretty tacky way to Christmasize your maddeningly awful chorus.

I suppose the mid-90's hey-isn't-this-Sugar-Ray?ness of this song proves that some things never go out of style. This song isn't one of them... but Columbia Records doesn't know that, and they're devoted to proving a moronic song excavated in a time capsule, with a big enough advertising budget and plenty of payola to radio stations, can hit #99 on the charts on the week of Christmas. Good job, guys.

RUN!

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

PS: Extra nausea factor: I just found out that this song is also a Coke commercial. Trying desperately to find Writer/Producer credits, I kept coming up with business articles about Coca-Cola's marketing strategy.