Nashville star Charles Esten’s most heartbreaking track is based on a real-life cancer battle.
The actor and songwriter, who is currently touring the UK following the release of his latest album Love Ain’t Pretty, penned the lyrics to his song Somewhere in the Sunshine after chatting with a friend who is “nearing the end” of his battle with cancer after seven years.
It’s not the star’s first brush with the heartbreaking condition, either, as his own daughter Addie was diagnosed with leukaemia when she was just two years old. Addie underwent gruelling rounds of chemotherapy which led to infections so severe they landed her in the paediatric intensive care unit.
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Thankfully, she’s now healthy after a decade of health checks from doctors, and a journey Charles said was “terrifying”. Now the star is channelling those emotions into his new song, and explained all in an exclusive chat with Daily Star.
He said: “Somewhere in the Sunshine absolutely had to do with where I was in the moment. I had been spending a lot of time with a friend of mine who is nearing the end of his seven year cancer battle, and so our conversations tend to be a little deeper. The things that don’t matter tend to fall away.
“He was talking about what comes next, and that balance between his faith and his fears. When I went to write with my friend Jon Nite, we had the title and he was ready to write something happy about the beach and tequila. That’s what I would have written 99 times out of 100, and it would have been a great song… but in that moment it instantly hit me that [that place in the sunshine is] where I think it all goes, where we end up, that’s what my faith says – that we’ll end up somewhere in the sunshine.”
The star went on to add: “I don’t know how it came together that it ended up being almost a postcard from the ones we love the most, writing back to us from the best place you could ever send a postcard from, saying ‘Don’t worry about me, I’m fine, I’m somewhere in the sunshine’. That’s why the lyrics are so simple and plain, they could be scribbled on a postcard.
“‘You should see this place’ is an almost funny line to write about heaven. It really means you should do everything you can to see this place, it’s beautiful.
“That little click in the writers’ room to do it from the one you love, but to keep it about the place and the love that person has for the person they’re speaking to… those things meant that people are connecting with it in ways that really move me. That’s when it steps out of being my song – it’s as much the listener’s song as it is my song.”
(Image: Lime Tree Music)
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Getting to grips with his writing process, Charles said: “It’s interesting because the songs were written over a rather large period. This album had been so long in coming I had songs written for a long time; I even made an early attempt at this album pre-Covid. When Covid struck and the lockdowns all happened, like everybody else your mindset shifted a little bit.
“Every word you have typed seemed irrelevant, they were not of the moment. Like everybody I needed a moment to just stop creating and just process. It was a hard thing to process.
“It certainly deepened the fact that life is hard and love is hard, it makes you vulnerable. So the concept of love is pretty – love ain’t pretty. It’s gruelling. But it’s the most beautiful thing there is, like anything meaningful you have to sacrifice something.”
You can catch Charles on his UK tour here.
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
