Christmas Number 1 Spotlight: A Candle For Carson: "It's brought a community together"

The track's producer Chris "Master C" Dewhurst talks us through its inception and how a tragic story has gone on to inspire a track in memory of Carson.

The race for Christmas Number 1 in the UK has a long and storied tradition of helping to shine a light on some charitable endeavours, raising money for those most in need.

2020 is no different, and one such release that has helped bring an entire town and community together is A Candle For Carson.

Written in memory of Carson Adams, who sadly died in November after battling congenital heart disease since birth. With the blessing of Carson's parents, producer Chris "Master C" Dewhurst recruited vocalist Miranda Myles and Andy Rose to compose A Candle For Carson. With the proceeds from the single, Carson's family are hoping to set up a charity in his name.

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We caught up with producer Chris to find out more information about the campaign and how A Candle for Carson has brought an entire town together in support.

"The Candle for Carson campaign is a project that we came up with while Carson was still in Alder Hey children’s hospital this year," Chris explained. "I asked Carson's dad, Chris West, if it would be okay to write a track for Carson. His reply was 'Do it!' I only had seven weeks to find the artists, write the track, raise some funds, get the artwork ready, shoot the music video and release the track, without any help from anyone in the music industry.

"Initially, the idea was to raise enough money from the track to be able to give to Carson for when he got out of hospital. Unfortunately, Carson sadly passed away just after we had recorded the track."

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How did the track come together?

"I had written a poem called A Prayer for Carson and added this to social media, which received a great response. In the poem, I had asked people to light a candle for Carson before they go to sleep at night. This then gave me the idea to expand on the poem and write a track.

"At first, the idea was to record an acoustic track with just myself & Miranda [Myles, vocalist] on vocals and keep it quite simple. However, as we were running out of time, Miranda sent her vocals over to me and I decided to pull Andrew Rose [part of Tractions] in to help produce the track with me.

"Once we had Miranda’s vocals, we wrote the music around her vocal and recorded my vocals into the track, which literally took us two days to finish in Andrews' girlfriends' dining room. We then sent the track to be mixed and mastered to Evan Wilde, a friend of Miranda, and he did a great job on this for free, which I can’t thank him enough for and the track was finished ready to go."

What led to the decision to enter the Christmas Number 1 race?

"I think it was mainly due to Christmas only being 10 weeks away, that gave me the idea to enter the race. I just thought it would of been a great thing for Carson to have achieved and something for him to be able to look back on."

After Carson’s tragic passing, how did that change the campaign and its music video?

"Obviously, this is something that hit us all very hard, as Carson was such a fighter, who had fought all his life and we were totally expecting him to be coming home. The track had just been finished and we couldn’t really change anything in the track, as the work was already done. We just decided to keep going with the work and this then made us all even more determined to make this project happen and take this little boy to the top."

What makes Candle for Carson deserving of the Christmas Number 1?

"It’s a great song that’s been written really well. It has so much meaning and power behind the track it’s untrue. It’s brought a whole town and community together like I’ve never seen before, and it’s all for a family that has sadly just lost their little boy, which I can’t imagine what they’re going through."

The Official Christmas Number 1 race runs between December 18 - 24. Tune in to The Official Chart with Katie Thistleton on BBC Radio 1 on December 25 from 2-4pm to hear the Christmas Top 40 countdown and the exclusive reveal of the winner of the Official Christmas Number 1 2020. The full Top 100 Official Christmas Singles Chart and Albums Chart will be published on OfficialCharts.com from 5.45pm.