Shine Your Light

Album: Red Light, Green Light (2022)
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Songfacts®:

  • On the surface, this soulful track sounds like a woman's plea to a lover who's drowning in his problems, but it's actually the story of a mother and her wayward child. "In this song, I'm telling the boy that I will watch over him like a satellite, if he'll let me, because I can see he's lost out in the cold, basically floating around in space," Vonda Shepard told Songfacts. "It's about seeing the potential in your child, but it's up to them to shine their light, and be seen."
  • This is the first single from Red Light, Green Light, Shepard's ninth studio album. She wrote and recorded the project during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, with her husband, Mitchell Froom, producing. "It took a massive amount of discipline to go through this process," she recalled, "but the isolation actually lent itself to going deep into the writing."
  • The album's September 2022 release comes on the heels of the 25th anniversary of Ally McBeal, the hit TV series that used Shepard's "Searchin' My Soul" as its theme song. Shepard also had a regular singing gig at the bar where Ally and her co-workers hung out. For her fall tour of the UK to promote the album, Shepard included some songs from the series on the setlist to celebrate the anniversary milestone.

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