Sherwin Gardner, a minister and musician from Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, the gloriously beautiful Caribbean island chain. Mr. Gardner went extremely viral on social media, becoming a massive overnight success, after he created an inspirational and catchy anthem about his faith that millions shared and which got over a billion views.
The song, called “Find Me Here (Blessings Find Me),” is about God’s blessings and was created by Mr. Gardner toward the end of 2023, when he decided that he wanted 2024 to be different than past years. His decision to write it came because, wanting the year to be different, he decided that writing a short affirmation about the upcoming year would help encourage him to think positively about 2024.
Through that thought process came the catchy, and now viral lyrics to the wonderful song: “Something good gonna happen in this year. / And I am grateful that I made it here! / Yesterday’s gone and a new day has appeared / And I am grateful that I made it here!” The melody, Mr. Gardner says, came to him shortly after he thought of the lyrics.
Then, after firing it off to a Kenyan music arranger, Mr. Garnder had a recorded version of the song ready. So, he uploaded it to two popular video sharing platforms, Instagram and TikTok. It went viral overnight, shooting from around a thousand views when he went to bed to 20,000 when he woke up in the morning, with many people loving and sharing the catchy tune.
Commenting on that rapid success, Mr. Gardner said, “The morning when I woke up, I had 20,000 followers, and the views — started at 8 o’clock, it was 14,000; by 10 o’clock it was 50,000; by 12 (noon) it was over 100,000 views.” He added that a friend told him, “Doctors, lawyers, gangsters, and teachers posted your song on WhatsApp.'”
Then, as the short version took off, he decided to turn the little snippet into a full song. After taking care of that on New Year’s Day, 2024, Mr. Gardner had a music distribution company called Tyscot Records release the song, which soon took off across platforms. In fact, the song has already been played well over a billion times on TikTok alone, a massive success.
It also led to praise for Mr. Gardner from, The Christian Post reports, “many including other music artists such as two-time American Grammy Award-winning producer Teddy Riley, R&B singer Alicia Keys, rapper Eve Jeffers, Destiny’s Child’s Michelle Williams, gospel artist Yolanda Adams, and comedian-turned-pastor Kel Mitchell.” For example, Teddy Riley wrote, “Brother Sherwin Gardner, you’ve created this amazing [song] that I have on repeat and play to remind me that there’s nothing impossible when God got your back.”
Gardner, for his part, said, “This is now become or becoming the anthem for many people and their prayer throughout the whole world.” Continuing, he added that God had blessed him with the song’s massive success, saying, “It has been totally unexpected and I’m so grateful for the answered prayers.”
Listen to the song here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video