Songfacts®:

• Bryan Adams started writing "Shine a Light" when both of his parents were in the hospital and he thought he was going to lose both of them. "I was just trying to write something that was a tribute to them," he told the BBC, "and I thought of the idea of shining light everywhere you go."
  
  The Canadian rocker struggled to finish the song until a chance meeting with Ed Sheeran backstage at a gig in Dublin in 2018. They kept in touch and one day he sent him the "Shine a Light" chorus and asked him if he was interested in assisting him in completing it. Sheeran agreed to help and they wrote the song together by email.
• Adams said the finished song is optimistic and uplifting and doesn't necessarily have to be about his parents. "It's saying everywhere you go, shine a light - because we are all little lights in our own way."