About
“Shine” is an original song performed by the Christian rock band Final Placement, which was first posted on the video-sharing site Vimeo in February 2010. The poor musicianship combined with the awkwardness of the video as a whole led to both Vimeo and YouTube users covering and creating remixes of the song.
Origin
Final Placement consists of four guys (Jacob and Collin on guitars, Jarrett on bass, and Josh on drums) from Midland Christian School in Midland, TX. According to the band’s site description:
It consists of four guys from Midland Christian School. They are currently playing shows. They dream of scoring a record label one day. The philosophy of FP is, “The world is gone but not lost it can still be saved, all it takes is the people to listen. Maybe if they will hear the message and change.”
The original video was posted to Vimeo sometime in mid-February 2010 by user sharity world. By March 2nd, it had 148,00 views, which is fairly remarkable for Vimeo. It was deleted on March 19th.
The second version of the video, now provided by user F.P. Shine, was uploaded March 1st. As of June 10th, this version had 14,400 views.
Spread
On February 19th, 2010, the A.V. Club was the first site to write about the video. From there, the video spread around the internet, hitting places like Comedy Central’s Tosh.0 Blog on Feburary 25th, Musicradar.com on February 26th, and filmmaker James Gunn’s blog on March 2nd. It was mirrored on CollegeHumor on February 23rd and Ebaumsworld on February 27th, hitting its peak that week.
Derivatives
After the video was already mirrored and mentioned on several blogs, covers and remixes of the song started popping up. These continued to appear into the month of March.
February 23rd, two boys covering the entire song:
February 26th, nearly 9 minute loop of the original guitar solo:
February 26th, Norma Jean death metal remix:
February 28th, guitar solo cover:
March 1st, piano cover:
March 4th, hardcore remix:
March 5th, ukelele and keyboard cover:
On March 2nd, Vimeo user F.P. Shine posted a parody “director’s commentary” edition of the video:
The website shinebyfinalplacement.com was created to showcase these remixes and covers with commentary.