Hoping to hit the charts with A Hero’s Xmas

With her first recorded vocal, Kal Elias is hoping to hit the charts this Christmas with A Hero’s Xmas, a track she is releasing in aid of the Royal British Legion.
Kal EliasKal Elias
Kal Elias

“It’s about when you go to war, the people left behind,” says Kal, who lives in Middleton. “The hero’s wish is for them to return home safely. My brother was in the army for 22 years. He was in Belize and Northern Ireland, and I know all about the anxieties, the checking your car all the time. And you just never, never know. You are always hoping, but it could be the member of your family who never comes home.”

Writing the lyrics came remarkably easily for Kal.

“I have always loved writing and have written many poems (five have been published). I have also had a children’s short story published in the Once Upon a Time series, but my greatest passion is writing lyrics to any piece of given music.

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“I originally wrote A Hero’s Xmas in 2015 as a bet from a guy called Gary Butler from Multi Media Group. He gave me the music and asked me to do the lyrics when I told him I could write anything about everything to any melody.

“He gave me the music and said ‘OK, write the lyrics!’ And I did. I think it took me about an hour. I have always loved writing, about my life’s experiences. I always just put them down in poetry.”

Kal didn’t do anything with the song at the time because the Military Wives were riding high and she didn’t have the contacts, but when she heard about Poppy people not being able to get out, she realised that the time had come to get the song out there: “The song is about war. It is about heroes. And I thought it would be good if 100 per cent of the proceeds went to them.”

It’s certainly new territory for Kal who was a professional dancer for 14 years, working on the cruise ships and in the casinos: “Then I wrote songs and music and produced my own shows, and then I ran my own little dance school in Middleton for 12 years, Stagestruck.”

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She moved on because she wanted something more stable – and then spent three very happy years working for Foxlease, the Girlguiding training and activity centre near Lyndhurst, Hampshire.

Sadly Kal was furloughed in March and has recently been made redundant: “I am gutted. I am absolutely gutted. It was a job that I absolutely loved. But I was made redundant because it is hospitality. I think they are going to have to do things differently in the future, and I totally understand where they are coming from. We catered for groups of people, and a lot of the parents were scared, and we also had a lot of ex-Guides, older people who would come for quilting or arts and crafts, and that was difficult.I have already started applying for other jobs, but there was one, for an operations co-ordinator, and 271 people applied for that position. But I am the eternal optimist.”

The dream would be to find employment as a lyricist: “That really would be the absolute dream. Lyrics just roll off my tongue.”

Apart from being on sale on i-tunes, it's also being sold on the Sony Global website with the following link: https://www.sonyglobal.co.uk/