While my wife was making lunch on Friday, a Madonna song was playing on the radio and she was singing along with it. I told her “My next blogpost is going to be about a cover of a Madonna song. Do you remember Angel?”
“No,” she replied, with immediate certainty.
“Neither do I.”
Of course, as I’ve prepared this blogpost, that hasn’t quite been true. The melody of the chorus has come running from the distant edges of my mental jukebox, shouting more insistently as it’s got closer, “Yes, you know! The one that goes ’You’re an angel’. Yeah? That’s right, the one that nobody remembers,” all while other “forgotten” Madonna tracks like Everybody or Where’s the Party look smugly on, thinking, “Well, at least he could make a passing stab at singing our choruses.”
She originally recorded the song for 1984’s Like a Virgin album, and it was released as a single; a successful one at that, peaking at Number 5 on both the UK and US singles charts. However, it was
overshadowed by the other two singles which came off that album, namely the title track and
Material Girl, both of which in different ways were gamechangers for Madonna’s career. By contrast, Angel became a footnote. I would probably have remembered it if she had included it in the setlist for her 1987 Who’s That Girl Tour, the live video of which I must have seen around 30 times due to indulging a school friend of mine who was, and remains, a massive Madonna fan and who had bought the video but had nothing to play it on. I think I saw that show more times than some of the videos I owned back then, but I assented to the regular plays of it because I fancied one of the backing singers and in 1989 with puberty jumping down onto me from a great height, I considered the hairspray, high heels and leather dresses look to be the apex of eroticism. Madonna, by contrast, with her goofy costume changes and the emphasis on Fun! Fun! Fun! wasn’t in the picture. It took a few years before she caught my attention.
But coming into view to rescue Angel from obscurity, here come Drop Nineteens, last seen on this blog as part of the mass dismissal of tracks played by Peel on his 8/11/92 show. On the evidence of this cover and some of the other tracks which Drop Nineteens recorded for the Delaware LP, that may have been a case of Peel’s occasional knack of giving prominence to a duff track on a record when he had an abundance of riches to choose from. Drop Nineteens version of Angel pitches the song at a lower key and while the synth/bass hook of the original is still evident, they build spaciously impressive guitar dynamics around it, which manage to both drive the song along for those in the mosh pit but also brings an ethereal quality missing from the original. Madonna’s song saw her falling for an earthbound figure of goodness, a metaphorical “angel”; Drop Nineteens sound like they have had a genuine visitation. Had saner voices prevailed at their UK label, Hut Records, then it should have been released as a single because an edited version up to the 3:44 mark would have had real mainstream potential. However, the band may have been wary of tying their future to a cover and potentially always being identified with another artist’s song so instead they released a tribute to Winona Ryder. Peel had seen them play recently in Norwich and had enjoyed them a lot, despite having previously written them off after seeing them described as “American shoegaze”, which may explain why the band attracted more interest in the UK than in their native homeland. In person however, as he told his audience, Their sound is a lot more robust than you might imagine.
Yes, it’s that one. Seems obvious once you hear it, doesn’t it?
Videos courtesy of Drop Nineteens-Topic and MadonnaUnusual
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