At first, I tried to do it by using a guitar pick, and it didn't sound right. I had to go online and Google aukulele lesson and noticed they're not using picks at all; it's more of a flamenco style. Once I got that down, then it sounded like the real deal.[4]
—Lead guitarist Jimmy Stafford, on having to learn to play ukulele as requested by lead singer Patrick Monahan in the recording of "Hey, Soul Sister"
After collaborating with the Norwegian production duo Espionage (Espen Lind and Amund Bjørklund) in the writing and recording of the track "Brick by Brick", Train's lead singer Pat Monahan decided to record another track with the duo.[4]
I said, 'I want to write anINXS-y song. So, they started playing kind of an INXS-y song, and I wrote the song 'Hey, Soul Sister' to it and the melodies and started to sing it. And I said, 'Man, this just doesn't sound great to me.'
— Pat Monahan, on wanting to write a song in INXS' style.
One of the guys, Espen, who's like a huge star in Norway, picked up a ukulele, and said, 'Hey, how about this?' I said, 'Are you (kidding) me?' And it made the difference. It made my words dance. It made sense. These words were meant to dance with ukulele and not guitar.
There's super catchy riffs and melodies in it, which I think are way more important that any production trick or great-sounding vocal production. It's kind of us going backward so we can go forward.
—Pat Monahan, on the band's return to itsfolk rock roots[5]
"Hey, Soul Sister" is a mid-tempopop rock song. Written in thekey ofE major,[6] the beat is set incommon time and composed in atempo of 97bpm. The song is characterized by a signature pattern played on a ukulele,[4] that follows a basic E5 – B – C#m – A (I5 – V – vi – IV) progression in theverse, tag andbridge, switching to an A – B – E5 – B (IV – V – I5 – V) progression in thechorus. The song's chord structure is arranged in an A B A B A B A form. Its chorus references the bandMr. Mister.
Lyrically, Stafford admitted the inspiration for the song came about while Monahan was imagining whatBurning Man must be like, and started penning lyrics inspired by the imagery he saw:[7]
The story lyrically, I’ve heard Pat talk about this in interviews. He’s always heard of Burning Man. Somewhere in Reno Nevada's desert, they do it every year. It’s this whole city in the desert that gets built for a festival that happens every year. They build a huge man out of wood and at the end of the festival they burn it. Pat had never been to Burning Man, but he had an image in his head of what it must be like. All these beautiful women dancing around the fire. That was the imagery he conjured up when he was writing the lyrics to, "Hey, Soul Sister." It’s a pretty big deal. Thousands and thousands of people go to it every year. People run around naked and I guess it’s a total crazy deal.
Monahan has since confirmed this in several radio interviews.[8][9]
"Hey, Soul Sister" received almost entirely negative reviews from critics.
The Village Voice derided the song, quipping "'Hey Soul Sister' is an orgy where bad ideas trade STDs, and the most syphilitic brain-fart stumbled in drunk from aSmash Mouth show ... From Smash Mouth, Train picked up an earworm that burrowed into society's asshole, laid 4.7 million iTunes eggs, and gave birth to a grey cloud of banality that covers the Earth."[10]Mother Jones concurred with theVillage Voice, approvingly quoting from theVillage Voice's review that "there is less soul in the entirety of Train than in the palest single member ofCollective Soul. 'Hey, Soul Sister' is soul for people who refer to peanut butter and jelly as 'soul food.' It makesthe California Raisins look like the second coming ofSly and the Family Stone. It's so white,Sarah Palin just named it her running mate for 2012."[11]
In a tamer review,Business Insider named "Hey, Soul Sister" the worst song of 2010 describing it as a "saccharine, falsettoed ear-bleeder."[12]LA Weekly took aim atPat Monahan's lyrical content, awarding "Hey, Soul Sister" places two through ten in its Top 10 worst lyrics of 2010 list.[13]
In a review ofJonathan Franzen's 2015 novelPurity,Slate writer Ruth Graham criticized its final pages, which contain a scene about "Hey Soul Sister", and the titular character Purity Tyler calling it a "great song." Graham strongly opposed the song and its lyrical content and called the scene the worst part of the novel.[14]
Alternatively, Scott Mervis, writing for thePittsburgh Post-Gazette, praised the song as a welcome comeback from the band's hiatus, calling the track "joyous" and "bouncy".[15]
The video was filmed in front of Chango Coffee at the corner of Morton Ave and Echo Park Ave. inEcho Park, Los Angeles, California. The video intercuts images of Train singing with a woman (Kiana Bessa Chastain) walking around her apartment and a man (actor Andrew Craghan) painting the words to the song on the landscape. Eventually the two meet each other in the street in front of the band.
It has also been played in several TV shows:CSI: NY in the episode "Second Chances",Hellcats in its first episode, andMedium in chapter6x03 "Pain Killer". It has also been played in the Canadian TV showBeing Erica, in chapter 3x11. "Hey, Soul Sister" can also be heard on "Ko'olauloa", the sixth episode of the rebootedHawaii Five-0, where it was sung and played live byAidan James.
The song was performed on ABC'sDancing with the Stars on May 4, 2010, and onAmerica's Got Talent on July 21, 2010. A cover of the song was also performed by "Munch's Make Believe Band," the animatronic show located atChuck E. Cheese's restaurants. TheDixie Chicks covered this song while on their 2010 tour withThe Eagles.
In October 2024, the American TV seriesSaturday Night Live spoofed the song in a sketch titled “Forbidden Romance”, where a white man in the 1950s (portrayed byAndrew Dismukes) performs the song in an attempt to convince his racist parents to approve of his engagement to a black woman (portrayed byEgo Nwodim). His parents are won over, but the woman's family, who had previously approved of the relationship, find the song so cringe-worthy that they revoke their approval, to which the woman agrees and dumps him.[22][23]
"Hey, Soul Sister" debuted at #98 on theBillboard Hot 100 for the week ended October 17, 2009, becoming their first charting single in five years. On the week of January 30, 2010, in its 16th week on the Hot 100 chart, "Hey, Soul Sister" leaped to #7 from #23 on an 81% digital single sales increase from the previous week, thus becoming Train's second career Top Ten hit on the chart. It reached #3 on theBillboard Hot 100 in the week of April 10, 2010, and it is their highest on the chart to date, even surpassing their 2001 hit, "Drops of Jupiter", which peaked at #5. The song climbed to #1 on theHot Digital Songs chart for the week of April 10, 2010, and stayed in the top spot for three weeks. As of the January 20, 2011, issue ofBillboard, "Hey, Soul Sister" had spent 22 weeks at number one on theAdult Contemporary chart.
The single sold 687,000 copies in 2009 which made it that year's #131 song. It went on to sell 3,319,000 more units in the first half of 2010 and 42 weeks after its release still stood at number 16 on the Hot 100 chart. By the end of December 2010, it had sold 4,310,000 digital copies, becoming the second biggest selling digital song of that year.[24] By the end of January 2011, it had sold over 5 million digital copies.[25] As of January 2014, the song had sold 6,417,000 digital units in the United States, one of the biggest-selling digital singles by a rock band sinceNielsen SoundScan began tracking download sales in 2003.[26]
BNA Records, acountry music label owned by Sony Music, released the song to the country music format in June 2010. It debuted at #60 on theHot Country Songs charts for the week ended July 10, 2010.[27]
In addition to revitalizing Train's career in their native country, "Hey, Soul Sister" has also become a big international hit; it was #1 on the official Dutch and Australian singles charts for 7 weeks and 4[28] weeks, respectively, and also became their first Irish number one single. The single charted at #2 inNew Zealand (their highest in the country to date), and reached #3 on both the Canadian[29] and Belgian singles charts.[30]
On April 24, 2010, "Hey, Soul Sister" debuted on theUK Singles Chart at #64,[31] marking the band's first appearance on the chart since "She's On Fire" reached a peak of #49 in 2001. On May 2, 2010, the single climbed into the UK Top 40 at #36 and has since reached a peak of #18. It has been in the official charts for 79 weeks. In Canada the song became the sixth-best-selling of 2010 with 244,000 copies.[32]
* Sales figures based on certification alone. ^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. ‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone.
