Songfacts®:

• Ash is a Northern Irish rock band. This song was written about frontman Tim Wheeler's now ex-girlfriend Audrey. As he was driving home one night, the tune and line "Yeah you are a shining light" came into his head. Wheeler raced home and wrote the song straight away using his acoustic guitar.
• This won the award for Best Contemporary Song at the 2001 Ivor Novello Awards and Best Single at the 2002 Irish Music Awards.
• This was the closing song in the final episode of the sci-fi series Roswell in 2002.
• Among the artists to cover this song are Coldplay and Annie Lennox. For Lennox, it was one of two new tracks on her 2009 The Annie Lennox Collection.
• Bass player Mark Hamilton recalled on Ash's website the song's promo, which was directed by Darren Tiernan: "In the video Tim went through David Blaine style torture as he was submerged for the guts of a day in this water tank. He encounters some form of mermaid as he swims up from the dark abyss towards a bright, shining light. As if in a coma he reaches the surface to awake in a hospital bed, while the rest of Ash look on wondering why they were called at 5am for this video shoot!"
• This song brought Ash back to the UK Top 10 for the first time since 1997. "'Shining Light' saved our career and really set us up for good," Tim Wheeler told Louder. "I knew we needed to come up with a really big song to get ourselves back on track and I spent a long time writing trying to find that song. The night I wrote it, I was really excited, I got the guys round the next day and they loved it too."