"Angel" is a song by Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan. The song first appeared on McLachlan's fourth studio album, Surfacing, in 1997 and was released as the album's fourth and final single in September 1998. The lyrics are about the death of Jonathan Melvoin (1961–1996), the Smashing Pumpkins' touring keyboard player, from a heroin overdose, as McLachlan explained on VH1 Storytellers. It is sometimes mistitled as "In the Arms of an Angel" or "Arms of the Angel". "Angel" was McLachlan's second consecutive top-five hit on the US Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number four. It also spent 12 weeks at number one on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, placing as the number-one song on that chart for 1999. In McLachlan's native Canada, it reached number seven on the RPM Top Singles chart and number three on the Adult Contemporary chart. Outside North America, the song has charted in several countries in the years following its release, including reaching number seven in Ireland in 2002 and number nine in Norway in 2008. Background "Angel" was one of the first songs written for Surfacing. Sarah McLachlan said that writing it was easy, "a real joyous occasion", and that "the bulk of it came in about three hours". It was inspired by articles that she read in Rolling Stone about musicians turning to heroin to cope with the pressures of the music industry and subsequently overdosing, most notably Jonathan Melvoin, a keyboardist for the Smashing Pumpkins, who died of an overdose in 1996. She said that she identified with the feelings that might lead someone to use heroin: "I've been in that place where you've messed up and you're so lost that you don't know who you are anymore, and you're miserable—and here's this escape route. I've never done heroin, but I've done plenty of other things to escape." She said that the song is about "trying not to take responsibility for other people's problems and trying to love yourself at the same time". Composition The song has a sparse arrangement, with only three instruments used: a piano played by McLachlan, a drum machine programmed by Pierre Marchand, and upright bass played by Jim Creeggan of Barenaked Ladies. It was recorded in the key of D-flat major. For live performances, it is transposed up one half-step to D major, the key it was originally written in, and played without the bass. Chart performance Released