Angel

Angel is track 4 on Hey Now Hey (The Other Side of the Sky), released by Atlantic on June 25, 1973, and was also a single, with Sister from Texas on the B-side. Carolyn Franklin and Sonny Sanders wrote it; Songfacts spells the second name Saunders. The album version runs 4:26 on the album page and 4:30 in the single article, the single 3:34, and there is a 2:56 promo edit without the spoken introduction. A soulmusic.com piece says a 3:43 edit was the commercial single in July 1973, while Wikipedia says June; the US catalogue number was not verified.

It reached number 1 on the US R&B chart for two weeks, number 20 on the Hot 100, number 37 in the UK, number 47 in Canada and number 44 on US Adult Contemporary, and sold more than 900,000 copies. It was her 13th US R&B number one. Record World predicted it should be a monster in no time at all.

The sessions

It was recorded at the Record Plant in Los Angeles in 1972; the sessions ran from April to August, with about 16 songs done by May. Quincy Jones and Aretha Franklin produced, and Wikipedia says Franklin also arranged. Overdubs, including strings, horns, Joe Farrell's tenor saxophone solo and Aretha's backing vocals, were finished by September 1972, and the album was remixed at Atlantic Studios in New York. Carolyn and Erma Franklin sing background. A work tape, with at least three initial takes and Aretha playing piano and cueing the musicians, is on the 2021 Rhino box set Aretha.

Songfacts has the song about bringing that special person into your life; it was not written for Aretha, but Carolyn felt it suited her sister once finished, and the spoken intro is Aretha telling of Carolyn calling her about it. No direct quote from either sister was found. The upload is from a fan archive channel, titled as the 1973 Atlantic recording, and which edit it carries was not checked.

Covers

Kokomo recorded it in 1975, Cassandra Wilson on She Who Weeps in 1991, Christine Anu in 2012 and Brian McFadden with Mica Paris in 2019. Simply Red released it as a single on EastWest on October 28, 1996, reaching number 4 in the UK, produced with Wyclef Jean, Pras and Jerry Duplessis; the video was directed by Paul Boyd and the B-side was Money's Too Tight (to Mention).