Angel by Sarah Mclachlan

photo taken from 121musicblog

It would just be wrong finishing this series of features without mentioning Sarah McLachlan. Even though she is Canadian, she is a reasonable competitor to Paula Cole, Jewel, Tori Amos and Aimee Mann. That is why she should definitely be mentioned here.

Sarah McLachlan sounds like walking alone through the dark night. She sounds like a peaceful day out on a cemetery. She sounds like drinking wine out of a bottle. She sounds . . . like an angel.

Michelle Goldberg wrote in her feature on McLachlan's music: "It's like the best friend who hides out with you when you're at your lowest, the friend who makes you tea, puts you to bed and takes care of everything while you sob into a pillow."

She hit the nail on the head. Especially Sarah's song "Angel" is often used in emotional scenes in films such as "City of Angels" and TV- series such as "Dawson's Creek" and "Alias".

Sarah performed the song at Live 8 in Philadelphia in 2005 and on "Concert for Linda", a concert in memory of Linda McCartney.

I have mentioned the song in my post about "wander" in my group blog wandersee, but I want to go into more detail this time.

The song is musically very simplistic. Broken up piano chords and her voice singing a thought out melody with many variations is all the song consists of. It is fascinating that it does not get boring. It never does. Not after listening the song thousands of times. The singer just puts so much emotion in word and melody that you can't help but get goose bumps.

There is no official music video for this song, but the most watched is a life version of her singing the song. The video is as simple as the music, but by seeing her emotions in her face and her eyes, this video can't get boring.



The lyrics are one of the saddest in the world - but cheer you up at the same time. They tell you that even when your life is at its worst, you can still escape in "the arms of an angel".

How this angel looks like varies from person to person. On the internet platform SongMeanings, people share their feelings and memories of past ones that they think of when they listen to "Angel". They imagine that they will be taken by their dead loved ones when they feel bad and spend some time with them as a comfort.

Even the day dream of such a thing happening can be the angel, Sarah Mchlachlan is talking about. For me, the angel is a day dream - a dream world where you go in your imagination when you can't handle reality anymore.

Sarah McLachlan herself explained that the song was about Jonathan Melvoin, the Smashing Pumpkins' touring keyboarder, who died in 1996 due to an overdose on heroin. What Sarah meant by the angel was obviously heroin - another way from escaping from the real world.

As so often this week, here I conclude again that a song can mean so many different things to different people - which are the beauty of well-written lyrics as they seem to be written just for you.

photo taken from Neverlend