The Angels

Album: Brave and Crazy (1989)
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Songfacts®:

  • A track from Melissa Etheridge's second album Brave and Crazy, "The Angels" finds her coming to terms with the relationship she sang about in "Bring Me Some Water" and "Like the Way I Do." Instead of fighting it, she's accepting that this relationship is not meant to be:

    All I want is for your love to be all mine
    But the angels won't have it


    Etheridge explained: "I said, 'I'm just going to let go of this, or I'm going to go out of my mind.'"
  • The video was directed by Julie Cypher and stars her husband at the time, Lou Diamond Phillips, as an angel looking over Etheridge and her young daughter. In the clip, Etheridge portrays a single mother living in suburbia, struggling to make ends meet. At the end of the video, Phillips takes human form and joins the family, presumably making everything OK.

    In real life, Etheridge and Cypher were striking up a romance (they met when Cypher was working on the "Bring Me Some Water" video), and soon after, Cypher split with her husband and took up with Etheridge. The two were a couple for about 12 years and had two children (birthed by Cypher) together.

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