"Shiny Happy People" is described as an accessible and optimistic pop song. It contains waltz-time strings, "rippling" guitars and "hippy" lyrics, and guest vocals from Kate Pierson. Pierson said she felt the song was an "homage" to her band, the B-52s. R.E.M. had already recorded the song when she arrived, and gave her no direction, telling her "do whatever you want".
R.E.M.'s lead singer, Michael Stipe, described "Shiny Happy People" as a "really fruity, kind of bubblegum song". Pierson interpreted the line "throw your love around" to mean "to share your love and grow your love with others. It's not mindless at all. It's a song about spreading love."
According to some reports, the phrase "shiny happy people" was taken from Chinese propaganda posters used after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. However, no statements from the band members have been found to support this. Pierson said the song was "supposed to be shiny and happy ... So I can't imagine that R.E.M. was thinking at the time, 'Oh, we want this song to be about Chinese government propaganda.'"
The accompanying music video for "Shiny Happy People" was directed by American film and music video director Katherine Dieckmann. She was asked by the band to direct the video, and drew some inspiration from a scene in the 1948 movie Letter From an Unknown Woman by German director Max Ophuls. In this scene, a couple goes to a carnival with a railroad car attraction. Rotating landscape backdrops roll past their "window", and eventually we learn they're propelled by an old man pedaling a stationary bicycle behind the scenes. Dieckmann wanted to re-create this situation, using a large children's painting for the moving mural. Stipe suggested her to contact a friend that was schoolteacher, having her fifth-grade class create the backdrop. From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiny_Happy_People
