The Kingdom Choir’s Windsor rendition of Stand By Me has shot Karen Gibson to fame. Here she explains how the passionate music has spread far beyond its church roots

Gospel is spreading, and we can praise Karen Gibson for that. The silver-coiffed conductor of the Kingdom Choir came close to stealing the show at the royal wedding last week, with a stripped-back, tear-inducing performance of Stand By Me.

The choir pulled off the impossible feat of following Bishop Michael Curry’s fanfare of a sermon, with Gibson controlling her own and the singers’ passions to bring calmness before the wedding vows.

“We didn’t know Michael Curry was going to be there,” she said. “He wasn’t at the runthrough. But my back is to him and I hear this voice, and I’m watching the choir getting all excited because his style of preaching is exactly what we’re used to – but we’re actually in St George’s Chapel, listening to a black gospel preacher. We want to say ‘hallelujah’ and ‘amen’ but of course we can’t, we just have to hold ourselves in.”

Since the wedding, Gibson and her London-based choir have been in the eye of a whirlwind, performing for TV in the US and around the world, and dealing with a deluge of interest on social media and beyond. Stand By Me has been streamed more than 100,000 times on Spotify and watched on YouTube more than 10 million times. The choir’s website has crashed twice. There is talk of a collaboration with Sheku Kanneh-Mason, the cellist who played while the Duke and Duchess of Sussex signed the register, and on Friday the choir filmed with the BBC drama Call The Midwife. People have even painted fan art of her – and more.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Karen Gibson and The Kingdom Choir perform at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on Saturday 19 May. Photograph: BBC

“They did a Bad Lip Reading of us,” she said, pulling out a phone to show a parody video of the wedding. “If you make it on to that, then you’ve made it.”

The attention is also offline. “People get so excited when they know it’s me,” she said. “They hug me in the street. People scream through the car window. People saying how it made them cry. I didn’t think that people would be so engaged with the song but people have thanked us over and over again.”

That overnight success has been 22 years in the making. After 11 years in IT, Gibson was made redundant and fell into teaching at a south London school. Eight years later she moved into music fulltime in 1996.

One of those who encountered Gibson in her early years was Gareth Malone, TV’s Mr Choir, before either had been on TV, when he saw her teaching schoolgirls. “She just went ‘Right!’, and she started, full tilt, gospel,” he said. “In the time it took me to pack up my bag, she had got them all singing this piece she was teaching them and it was amazing.”

The Kingdom Choir was named when she was asked to bring her then nameless choir to Songs of Praise for the BBC show’s 35th anniversary. “I went to sleep and the name that I dreamt of was the Kingdom Choir. I couldn’t think of anything else.”Since then the Kingdom Choir has performed at the Queen’s Jubilee, the 1995 VE day commemoration, with the Spice Girls, Elton John, for Bill Clinton, Desmond Tutu and with Joan Armatrading as a surprise for Nelson Mandela when he spoke at the London School of Economics.

None was as momentous as the wedding of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, Gibson said. “It’s because we were invited to a private ceremony, even though it’s televised and millions of people were watching. It’s a very special thing, a wedding – it’s an honour, because there are vows being performed, a union, a coming together. It’s history being made. Even with ordinary people, this is family history, we’re spending the rest of our lives together.”

She got the call when she was on a bus in Battersea, two months ago, and a few days later they were at Kensington Palace to meet the couple. “We did a little sing-song for them,” Gibson said. “They seemed really in love. They were really into each other. And spoke as one. They are like any other couple in life and any other couple who want to get it just so.”

Play Video 2:33 Highlights of Harry and Meghan's wedding 2018: the dress, the vows, the kiss – video

Prince Charles had suggested a gospel choir, she said, but Stand By Me had to be exactly right, so she asked Mark De-Lisser, a former Kingdom Choir singer who has worked with Adele and Jessie J, to do the arrangement. “They wanted it done in a very specific way. We got lots of instruction about how it should be performed. They sent us a couple of links, a Tracy Chapman version. They didn’t want it to be too rhythmic and you can hear that in this arrangment. If we were to do it in a strictly gospel style, it would be a lot more florid – they wanted it really stripped back.” That complemented the relative simplicity of the couple’s other decisions, she said: the duchess’s “demure, simple” dress and her subtle makeup. “I think they had a very clear idea of how they wanted the service to go. If we did a full-on gospel number it wouldn’t have worked so well.”

Gospel really is spreading. Malone said he has had no trouble finding gospel choirs for his tour, “even in places you wouldn’t expect, like Preston or Newcastle”, and Gibson agrees – one of her community choirs, Gospel on the Rise, performed last night in London and she was out delivering leaflets on Friday.

“It’s not mainstream, but you have so many community gospel choirs up and down the country. They’re blowing up, absolutely blowing up,” she said. “People love music. When you add that to the themes of hope, love, joy, healing, redemption - it’s got to affect your spirit. I’ve taught Buddhists, I’ve taught Muslims, I’ve taught witches, and they have absolutely loved it.

“Whether you’re a Christian or not, it does something for your spirit. I believe that when you’re singing, the sound comes out and the words go in and if they’re words of joy then they’re going to cause joy. They’re going to bring joy, they’re going to bring peace and healing. they’re going to bring hope. It’s not scientifically tested but I keep seeing the same thing.”