The origin of 'No Candle on the Shelf' is attributed to Nneka Vasile-Oduya, a Shelf midwife and part-time singer who composed it in 2191 following a period of unusually high infant mortality in her district during a winter when heating infrastructure failed for eleven days. The song is a lullaby that became a funeral song — or perhaps a funeral song that was always also a lullaby. Its structure is a slow, modal melody rooted in West African tonal tradition, overlaid with a wordless humming countermelody borrowed from Norwegian folk practice, with a rhythmic underpinning of soft handclaps in a pattern that grief researchers have noted mirrors a resting heartbeat. It is sung without instruments by preference, though instruments are not forbidden.

The lyrics speak to the dead in second person, present tense — not as if they are gone, but as if they have simply moved to a place without power. 'No candle on the shelf' refers simultaneously to the literal darkness of Shelf housing during outages and to the act of putting out a candle for the dead. The song has spread across all tiers in the thirty-five years since its composition, though it is sung differently depending on where: on the Shelf, it is communal and unadorned; in Tier 3 and 4, it has been orchestrated, formalized, and occasionally performed by professional ensembles; in the Spire, it is considered tasteful, a nod to authentic suffering that costs nothing to appreciate from a distance. Nneka Vasile-Oduya, still living at 81, has stated publicly that she finds the Spire's adoption of the song 'neither flattering nor surprising.'