An article for American Songwriter revisits "Shine A Light", a track on The Rolling Stones' 1972 album Exile on Main St, explaining how the song serves as a tribute to founding member Brian Jones, who died in 1969 shortly after being forced out of the band. It highlights how Jones, once the band's leader and a key contributor to its mid-1960s baroque pop sound, was gradually sidelined by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards before his dismissal and subsequent death, and how the band publicly mourned him even as they moved forward musically without him.

Jones was fired on 8 June 1969 and found dead in his swimming pool less than a month later; two days after his death, the Stones performed a Hyde Park tribute concert that also introduced his replacement, Mick Taylor. Jagger began writing "Shine A Light" about Jones while he was still alive and finished it afterwards, blending gospel influences picked up from Billy Preston (who also played piano on the track) with lyrics that acknowledge Jones's troubled final years while imagining a peaceful afterlife for him.