"Shimmer" by Fuel, Monday, April 4, 2022
Fuel's 1998 hit "Shimmer" propelled the band onto the rock charts. This was the post-grunge, Modern Rock era when rock's sound was cleaner, less gravelly, but still hard. At this time, rock still had crossover pop-chart/ Hot 100 hit-making skills. While Fuel's follow-up record, Something Like Human would sport two hits that charted higher than "Shimmer," the band's first song is still one of their best-known songs.
ALL THAT SHIMMERS IN THIS WORLD IS SURE TO FADE. I've included a video below about the career of Fuel. When I think of late '90s/early '00s Modern Rock, Fuel is certainly on my shortlist, but I'm not sure that they would make everyone's. I'd list Third Eye Blind, Semisonic, Tonic, Vertical Horizon, and The Goo Goo Dolls along with Fuel, though Fuel aimed to be a harder rock act than these groups. That may be one reason Fuel may be forgotten. Another reason may be that after Something Like Human, they were scarce on radio play. Their third record, Natural Selection, contained the hit "Won't Back Down (Give You Hell)," which was featured on the Daredevil Soundtrack, but Evanescence's "Bring Me to Life" obscured the band's would-be big hit from the movie. The band would then go through changes in their line up including their lead singer--a change that used to be career suicide, and ultimately failed to record or release anything as catchy as their big three hits: "Shimmer," "Hemorrhage (In My Hands)," and "Bad Day." Incidentally, the band's first single tells us that "all that shimmers in this world is sure to fade" and that shimmer is "too far away for [the speaker] to hold." The subject of this song is a girl who is chasing that shimmer and is delusional because of it. Maybe chasing fame makes us all a little delusional. Maybe it's chasing any dream.
IT'S TOO FAR AWAY FOR ME TO HOLD. While the song still feels timeless to me, and Boyce Avenue & Tyler Ward's cover sounds even more timeless to me, the music video for "Shimmer" certainly is a time capsule with its shifty cinematography and the lead singer's bleach blonde hair. The cover of the song highlights the delicate without the shifting urgent tone in the second verse when singer Brett Scallions quotes James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Up until this point, the band had played slowly, even with a violin accompaniment. As the shimmer dims, the songs gets more and more urgent, until finally speaker decides: "I guess I'll let it go." So many rock stories or music stories are like Fuel's. But many band's don't even have three hits to rub together. Like the music industry, life too doesn't always work out. We're promised the world when we're young, but the older we get the shimmer seems to be a mirage. Sure, the foolish among us live in the "fields of butterflies." Some of us hope for "strawberry surprise[s]," but we certainly can't bank on it. When we are growing up we may think that we will hold out for dreams and never settle for less, but as the shimmering starts to fade, ultimately we decide that we have to stick to what is solid. The bouncy light is just a distraction.
Boyce Avenue & Tyler Ward cover:
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