Songfacts®:

• Rufus Wainwright closes his seventh studio album, Out Of The Game with this reflection on his mother, Kate McGarrigle, who died of cancer in 2010 at 63. He told the UK newspaper The Sun: "I'm still dealing with my mother's death. The second year anniversary came and the pain bounced back again. I don't think there was a more famous mother-son duo than us. We worked together, partied together and were super-close.
  
  That song is based on a real story. Throughout my mother's illness and subsequent death we all would light candles at cathedrals throughout the world and it was very comforting. Then she died and I ended up going to three different churches in the week after she had passed and each one of them was out of candles.
  
  At first, I took it as a message saying, 'I'm OK now, don't worry. You felt the sun in your life and I'm traveling.' But then when I did finally light her a candle I was in Paris at Notre Dame cathedral. It was high mass and there was incense everywhere, singing and organs and then I realized, 'Wait a minute, my mom was just hedging her bets."
  
  He added with a laugh: "She wanted me to do it in the big church. She wasn't going to have it in the chapel down the street, she wanted the big cathedral "I'm not a religious person but I am a spiritual person and it made me think how grateful I was because my mom actually did have a really good death and was at home with her family. We were lucky."
• Here's some candle trivia:
  
  Slow-burning candles made of tallow or wax and usually cylindrical with a fiber wick at the center, have been used since 3000 BC.
  
  Around the turn of the 19th century, domestic illumination was still mainly by candles. The gentry used beeswax candles; everyone else used tallow.
  
  You can see a candle flame from 50 Kilometers on a clear, dark night.
  
  In the US, seven out of 10 homes use candles.
• Producer Mark Ronson gave Wainwright creative control of this song. Rufus told MusicRadar: "We tried a couple of things with drums at one point, but it became obvious that I had to do it my way. I dictated the full structure and production of the piece, and Mark facilitated it for me. It has my family, it has bagpipes, it has funeral drums... I knew where to go with it. Mark was there the whole time listening, appreciating and supporting me - mostly emotionally. It wasn't an easy song to do."