ABOUT:
SHINE A LIGHT
Chris Goodwin had been working on this song for a while
when I first heard it in a little Sunday night songwriters
group that we were in. The group had jelled over the months
and we were feeling comfortable commenting on each others
songs – what worked, what could make it better, etc.
At the time, the tempo was slower, the song’s chorus
much longer, the bridge music was very similar to the
verses and a few lines weren’t as strong as they are
now.
Chris and I got together and started tweaking the lyrics. I
went at the chording tempo, chorus and bridge, trying to
find a flow that spoke to me. Co-writing was old hat to me,
but very new to Chris, so it took a little while for us to
settle on this version, after emailing lyric possibilities
and chatting on the phone over the course of a few weeks.
Finally, our schedules allowed us to be in the same room
again (the only way a good co-write can happen in my
opinion). Susan, another song writer in our group and
Chris’s love, sat in with us. The three of us chatted
about the intent, emotion, and images, tweaking lines as we
went from the first line to the last.