About

"Wake Up" is a 2008 song by the dance-punk band Cheese People. In August 2021, the song went viral on TikTok, where it was used to accompany various remixes and montages, also gaining popularity as an alarm song.

Origin

On September 12th, 2008, Russian dance-punk band Cheese People released their eponymous debut album Cheese People.^[1] On the album, the song "Wake Up" was released (music audio shown below).

Hey, come on, you lazy, wake up
Hey, come on, take your drums

Spread

The song did not achieve global popularity until 2021 when it started gaining recognition on TikTok. On April 9th, 2021, TikToker^[2] penuelam_a posted one of the first viral TikToks that used the song, with the video gaining over 2.9 million views and 281,700 likes in four months (shown below, left). On July 17th, 2021, TikToker^[3] seikimoko posted a montage based on a music video for K-pop song 나일수록 좋아 – 도우미 by 3SPICE and set to the song. The TikTok received over 6.2 million views and 1.6 million likes in one month (shown below, right).

Starting in late July 2021, the song achieved major popularity on TikTok, primarily being used to create feel-good montages, whether based on original footage or using existing media. For example, on July 30th, 2021, TikToker^[4] aquazea posted a montage of the Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop anime that gained over 3.2 million views and 496,000 likes in three weeks (shown below, left).

On August 23rd, the song achieved number one position on Spotify's Viral 50 USA playlist.^[5] As of August 24th, over 76,000 videos using the song were posted to TikTok.^[6]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References