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"Shimmer"
Single by Fuel
from the album Sunburn
Released	August 25, 1998
Format	CD, 7" vinyl
Genre	Alternative rock, post-grunge
Length	3:35
Label	Epic
Songwriter(s)	Carl Bell
Fuel singles chronology
"Shimmer" (1998) "Bittersweet" (1998)
"Shimmer" (1998) "Bittersweet" (1998)
Music video
"Shimmer" on YouTube

"Shimmer" is Fuel's first single from their album Sunburn. It was released on August 25, 1998.

Written by Carl Bell, the single peaked at #2 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks charts, #11 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, #37 on the Adult Top 40 chart and at #42 on the Billboard Hot 100.^[1]

Music video

The music video has the band performing the song (mostly centered on singer Brett Scallions) and has short flashes to things like a mother and infant child and a dog. Directed by Josh Taft the film clips theme of the past and the present draws quite heavily from the songs lyrics of a shimmering love that while starting off mesmerizing but can and will eventually fade and be torn away through emotional distance and neglect. The visions concentrate on the position of a past potential family in the story tellers life as wholesome visions of a woman post pregnancy in a white dress, a faceless father holding a baby, a gold fish and a family dog come into focus but are rarely seen clearly as the camera blurs and we are drawn quickly away. As the lyrics grind on describing the prior engagements with the female antagonist Taft brings us quite suddenly to the realization that the gold fish is dead, the family dog blurs away and the baby ceases to move and recedes to a cold blackened shape. The arrival of a female antagonist with symbolic sands of time falling through her outstretched hands heralds the arrival of new life as the song reaches its climax. The protagonists car ride slowly but surely drifts him along and possibly away from the dead home-life but the gold fish now risen is rejoined by a now clearer vision of the family dog and the squirming life of the baby in a mans arms returns. The director has hinted at an emotionally empty space; a dead home through his lack of furnishings, drained color and detached objectivity but seems to suggest that the storyteller singer becomes the one framed in the past while the others live on as suggested in the closing scene.

Track listing

1. "Shimmer" - 3:31


2. "Walk the Sky" - 3:19


3. "Sunday Girl" - 3:41

Shimmer import CDs

1. "Shimmer"


2. "Shimmer (acoustic version)"

Critical response

Billboard wrote that "the best thing about 'Shimmer' is that it doesn't wallow in angst melodrama or reek of kiddie-pop sugar," and called it "vibrant, aggressive rock' n'roll for adults."^[2]

References

External links

• 
  Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics