Track 7 on “Kiss and Tell” is ‘Angel on my Shoulder’.
This track is one of my favourite ever songs to have written. It was written way back in 2004 when I visited St. Louis in Missouri, USA for a conference. It took a long time to reach the surface…. Maybe there’s a reason for that…?
So, I was staying in the Hyatt Regency hotel at Grand Union station (it has sadly re-located now), and I left the conference floor and took the elevator back to my room to get changed for the evening. I was standing in the elevator alone when it stopped at a floor, the doors opened and 2 American women appeared, talking together. They naturally went to step inside….. One of the women looked up and noticed me in the lift car, stopping abruptly, she held the arm of her friend and said “He’s got an angel
on his shoulder”…. She guided her friend back out of the lift, the doors closed and up I went alone to my room, never to see them again…
I have no clue what this encounter meant but it has stayed with me ever since...
When it came to the new album, I reviewed a lot of songs but “Angel..” now seemed to want to see the light of day so out it came… It was easy to record and I thought no more about it.
When the other 12 songs were complete I listened again and thought maybe “Angel” didn’t belong on the album. It sounds very much like a Eurovision song in my opinion (in fact it was turned down at the shortlist as the Ireland entrance for Eurovision 2024…).
Somehow it made the cut and I sent it to my close friend Andy to have a listen. I like to get feedback early on the songs. Within minutes of hearing the tune he called me and said it made him think immediately of his daughter, Ana, who tragically took her own life a couple of years earlier. Andy and his wife, Ali, really went through the mill over their loss and will do for a long time to come. As soon as I learned how they felt about the song, it became “Ana’s song”… It was meant to be…and it really is an honour to name a song for someone who was so loved and sadly wasn’t able to win the terrible battle with suicidal thoughts.
So many people (young and old) take their own lives. It really is a tragedy and one that keeps repeating. The pressure society places on our shoulders is too much. If having an “Angel” on our shoulders helps in any way, then I sincerely hope that Angels stay on all our shoulders
Crispin x
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