Songfacts®:

• This is a track from Wake Up!, a collaborative album between R&B musician John Legend and Hip-Hop band The Roots. Inspired by the 2008 United States presidential election, Legend and The Roots primarily covered 1960s and 1970s soul music songs for the record with social themes of awareness, engagement, and consciousness.
• This sunny look at future generations is the one original song on the collection. Legend originally penned it for Davis Guggenheim's documentary film Waiting for Superman. However, the version on Wake Up! differs stylistically from the one he recorded for the movie. He explained why to Artist Direct: "The one I did for the film is more of a straight piano ballad with the strings at the end in the vain of 'Ordinary People.' It was meant to be darker, more spare and contemplative. We wanted to make this version feel more unified with the rest of the album, so we listened to some Stevie Wonder as reference. We listened to 'I Believe When I Fall in Love, It'll be Forever' from The Talking Book as our principal reference when we were thinking about how to arrange 'Shine.' I think we were able to really achieve what we were going for which was to have something that was a rousing hymn at the end of the album."