The Marsh Family – “Keeping the Dream Alive”

The Marsh Family have gone from kitchen-table lockdown parodies to a full family band that actually treats this as their lane now. Six voices, a house full of instruments, and a habit of tying their songs to causes they care about. This time they’re not twisting lyrics into parodies, they’re taking Münchener Freiheit’s “Keeping the Dream Alive” and using it to raise money for Tiny Toes and the neonatal unit that helped their neighbours’ child. It’s the kind of big emotional song they’re built for, sung by a family that still sounds like your neighbours.

Their version opens in a small, close way. Stacked high female vocal layers hover over soft guitar and what feels like winter air, those almost “Christmas wind” textures that sit in the top end. Then the rest of the family step in, one by one: lower harmonies, a second lead line, the parents filling out the middle. Strings slide in under the verse, not as a huge swell at first but as a calm bed, before the arrangement starts to climb.

By the time the chorus hits, you’re in full Christmas special territory. Brass, timpani, bells, chimes, all the classic end-of-year colours are there, but you can still hear individual voices and instruments poking through. The teenagers carry bass, drums, piano, synth, cornet and violin; guitars and cello knit it together; the whole thing sways like a street-lit garden where someone has gone completely overboard with lights for a reason. Near the end, the arrangement drops back to Tess’s vocal and that key line about keeping the dream alive, giving the charity angle a quiet, direct landing instead of one last blast.

For sync, this arrangement is ready-made for Christmas TV and film: charity appeals, family dramas that close on candles or fairy lights, scenes built around memorial light displays, or recap montages in holiday specials. It also fits year-end docs, NGO campaigns, and brand spots that want a recognisable late-80s melody framed by real family voices instead of something that feels like a TV jingle. Anywhere you need “hopeful but emotional Christmas” and a sense of real people behind the sound, this will lock in immediately.

The Clark Family are collecting donations through a JustGiving page: https://justgiving.com/page/81colonelslanelights2025.