GREAT APES: Angel 🪽

🎸❄️☕️

In 1997, Sarah McLachlan told Spin magazine that her song “Angel” is about “trying not to take responsibility for other people's shit and trying to love yourself at the same time.” A fine notion on which to meditate as 2023 draws to a close, and since, if you’re like us, you’ve heard Ms. McLachlan’s “Angel” a thousand times in your life and have steeped in it so long that you may have trouble really hearing it anymore, here’s Keith with a version that’s juuuuuust wrong enough that it should short-circuit those well worn neural pathways and give you a fresh experience of this marvelous tune.

CHRIS: Keith, we were talking about doing some kind of holiday-related cover for an end-of-the-year S.D.I.R. edition and it was a hard talk, lots of long pauses, because we both hate Christmas music, want it deleted from the world’s hard drives and any vinyl etched with it to be melted, but a song surely needed to be posted, and to ignore the season altogether would seem willful — to post, say, “Kokomo” — and I said that Sarah McLachlan’s music has always felt at least “wintry” to me, if not explicitly holiday-themed, and then you went away and recorded this top tier cover of “Angel.” I’m curious whether you agree with my thinking or just determined that if I feel that way, some other people must also feel that way, and so you might reasonably consider your duty to our readers discharged. Is Sarah McLachlan winter music?

KEITH: Well, *I* don’t associate MacLachlan with winter, no, although that’s likely due to the fact that I spent her heyday (as I perceive it) living in South Florida, and so I mainly associate her music (really, all music released before 1998) with, like, snapping turtles and tropical storms.  She’s real “board shorts” music to me.  All music from my adolescence is “board shorts” music.

But, look, I had no ideas for a holiday song. I definitely didn’t want to do a legitimate Christmas carol, and most “pop” holiday songs totally suck. Apart from “Blue Christmas” and “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight Tonight)” (both of which I did a few years ago on our livestream) and the unimpeachable-but-terminally-overplayed “Last Christmas,” there’s just dreck. After harsh exposure to the genre during a last-minute-panic holiday shopping spree in Brooklyn a few days ago, I began a text interrogation of ex-Weezer bass maestro Matt Sharp, demanding his insight into why all pop-punk Christmas songs (and there are a LOT OF THESE, meeting no popular demand) just sound like old Weezer c-sides with words like “mistletoe” peppered in. He feigned ignorance of this very real phenomenon.

Anyway, I was relieved that you came to the table with your McLachlan suggestion. I was willing to jump at any idea, and although I don’t personally associate her music with any of the trappings of winter, I’m more than happy to indulge you. I, like any thinking person, am a big McLachlan fan. 

I did have a hard time really nailing down which songs other than “Angel” were options, though. I’m a big “Adia” and “Sweet Surrender” and “Building A Mystery” guy, but none of those feel even slightly holiday-relevant, to me. “Angel,” as a tender, lilting waltz, felt like it fit the bill, but since its relentless use in those ASPCA commercials, I kinda just associate the song with images of cringing, skeletal dogs chained to pickup trucks and cats with eye infections.

A weird revelation for me, doing the pre-recording McLachlan research, was that —apart from the maimed-animal-boosted “Angel,” her #1 Spotify tune — she seems most popular these days for her actual, no-shit Christmas music. She’s released at least two albums that seem (I couldn’t bring myself to actually listen) to be made up strictly of legit Christmas carols and covers of chilly-weather tunes. Three of her top songs are from these albums, and a fourth is from, uh, Toy Story 2. What the hell? What the everloving hell?

CHRIS: To me, she’s got a voice and a songwriting mind that can’t help but conjure icicles, avalanches, and hot cocoa. It’s not a surprise that her lazy latter era has leaned into explicit explorations of that competency. Everybody gotta lean on their strong leg when they get tired. You know that phrase, about leaning on your strong leg when you tire? Sure you do — I’m pretty sure you coined it!

Anyway, I’m totally sympathetic to your frustration with the holiday genre, and other than Mannheim Steamroller I think nobody does Open Door Christmas Music well. (Mannheim Steamroller’s stuff doesn’t have vocals, or I’d certainly have been voting aggressively for an M.S. cover today.) What we might call Closed Door Christmas Music, though — music where you never actually get a glimpse of The Artist and Christmas fucking — can be sweet indeed, and I don’t think anybody beats Ms. McLachlan at that game. What I think her music does so effectively is to channel a quiver of sentiments that are quintessential to “the holidays” (or an idealized version of them). I’m talking here about familial fellow-feeling, or a longing for it; cozy reflections on a cosmos where humankind boasts seminal agency; tasty food and bev, shared with pals; the importance of tradition and continuity. 

Like all great music, I think, Sarah McLachlan’s music evokes another common holiday topic: salvation. Poking around the internet, I stumbled onto a 2006 interview with Darryl McDaniels, a.k.a. “DMC” from Run DMC. It appeared in a thing called “IGN Music.com,” and is now archived here, and I will quote it at substantial length due to the equally substantial payload:

"I've been on this earth for 35 years and 10 years ago I'm sittin' there and I'm like 'Yo, am I here just to be DMC?' First to go Gold, first to go Platinum, did all of this. Grew up in Hollis, Queens, I went to the best Catholic schools all my life, Catholic elementary, Catholic high school, I went to St. Johns University. Okay, it was Christmas for me everyday growing up as a kid. I was spoiled. Best life a kid could have. Now I become DMC with Joey, who was just Joey, but now we're Run DMC and we go on to spearhead the whole hip-hop movement and we go on to fortune and fame. So I'm sittin' over in Europe 10 years ago and sayin' 'Somethin' ain't right here. Somethin' is missin'.' But I couldn't put my finger on it. So I said to myself--not that I wasn't happy with the way things were goin' and I wasn't grateful for all of my accomplishments, but I said 'Okay, I'm gonna commit suicide.' Why? Probably because I was unhappy with 'if this is all I'm gonna get out of this life, I can't stay here. I'm ready to move on to my next plane of existence. There's gotta be more to this. People were like 'D, you're crazy! You're f-----' DMC. You've got a wife, kids, life is beautiful.' I said, 'All of that is lovely, but there's something else that is missing.'"This was in '97 and I said 'When I get home from Europe…' I was in Europe and Run DMC, without havin' a hit record or video, we're over in Europe getting' a hundred grand a night. Life can't be better than that s---. I don't give a f--- if somebody knows nuthin' about my music, we're the f-----' Rolling Stones, we're the f-----' Beatles of hip-hop. A lotta rappers, after they sell their 21 million two years from now you ain't gonna care about these muthaf-----. It don't get no better than that. Me, Run, and Jay, we were able to tour until we were 85. People would still comes see us doin' "It's Like That" [as old men]. But I said 'When I get home, I'm gonna commit suicide.' So I get home and I get in the car that picks me up [at the airport], I turned the radio on. Sarah McLachlan's "Angel" was on the radio. That record saved my life. Wife. Kids. Fortune. Fame. I didn't give a f--- about none of that. I turned the radio on--and I'm tryin' to express to you how it's so funny. I turned it on and I heard Sarah McLachlan's record and something that day said 'Life is good. It's good to be alive.' "So I go and I buy that record and everything Sarah McLachlan ever made. I listen Sarah McLachlan for one whole year. At the end of the year the Grammy's come around and my manager says 'D, let's go to the Grammy party. We're gonna go to Clive Davis' party.' I didn't want to go. I didn't care about s---. All I cared about was Sarah McLachlan records. So we go to the Grammy party, I get there and who do I see sittin' across the room--'cuz she was on Arista Records under Clive Davis--it's Sarah McLachlan. She was 'that lady.' I go 'Oh my god, it's that lady!' So I'm gettin' all nervous, but then I go 'No, I gotta go over there and tell Sarah McLachlan what her record did for me.' So I pushed through the red carpet and the paparazzi, I get over to Sarah McLachlan, she looks up and she sees DMC standin' there in his full Run DMC regalia, hat, dressed in black, Adidas on. She says 'Run DMC, I love you guys. I love what you guys represent. Your music is so cool. I'm a big fan.' I'm like 'Wow!' Then I go, 'Ms. McLachlan, thank you for tellin' me that but I was suicidal, I didn't know what life was about, I had a lot to live for, but I was upset and was gonna kill myself. I don't know if I would've really done it, but just having suicidal thoughts. Then I heard your record "Angel." Now the record's name is "Angel," you sound like an angel, people say you're an angel, but you're not an angel to me, you're a god.' And I'm goin' on and on and on and she's lookin' at me like 'Oh-kaaaaay. So I finish and she looks at me and she says this to me: 'Thank you for telling me that Darryl, 'cause that's what music is supposed to do.' She shakes my hand and she walks away.”

I wonder how many lives Sarah McLachlan’s music has saved? 

KEITH: Huh. Well, uh, okay. Okay, Daryll. 

In a bit of an ironic twist, it kinda seems like falling in love with McLachlan’s music sorta *ruined* his life a little bit. On their next record, he apparently wanted Run DMC to move toward a “slower, softer sound,” a la his new heroes Harry Chapin and McLachlan, to which his bandmates said, “No.” “No, DMC. Bad, DMC!” And so he ended up sitting out most of the next Run DMC record, replaced by such luminaries as Nas, Fat Joe, and, uh, Kid Rock? And then that record was Run DMC’s last, and while DMC did go on to produce music more in line with his newfound passion for tender sonics, it doesn’t sound like it went very well. Of his one and only solo album, “Checks, Thugs, and Rock and Roll” (my GOD, that would be a great title for a Sarah McLachlan record), reviewer Steve 'Flash' Juon said "[it’s] often compelling, but for all the wrong reasons — it's the trainwreck you can't look away from no matter how hard you try. Most listeners will feel their $15 would have been better spent donating to spasmodic dysphonia research that would help others like D rather than listening to a painful album that just makes you yearn for what was and will never ever be again."

Which, look, if he’s making the music that moves him, who gives a shit what the reviews say? The guy SHOULD be pursuing his passions, not phoning in the same old tired pablum because it’s what other people want to hear from him. As much-worse-than-McLachlan soft-rock artist Sheryl Crowe says, “If it makes you happy, then do it, DMC.”  

But it sounds like it it didn’t make him happy, because it was his final album. I can’t really make my own assessment of the record, as it’s not available to hear anywhere online. It’s a ghost. It’s the Keyser Soze of albums: its wickedness is legendary but impossible to confirm. I found the lead (and only) single “Lovey Dovey” on YouTube, but only in instrumental(?!) form. It’s 4:48 of the same four bars of a basic, smooth guitar line over a truly perfunctory hip hop beat, utterly unchanging. Maybe the vocals are killer, but it’s hard to imagine this beat representing a creative musical breakthrough for DMC. It kinda suggests to me that a love of Sarah McLachlan *degraded* his interest in music.

He’s recently started dropping singles here and there, though. His Spotify account features a smattering of one-offs from the past three years, including a middling but fun collaboration with Jazzy Jeff, Chuck D, and television star ICE T. So, he’s back in the game!

Anyway, all of this is just to say that Sarah McLachlan produces very potent, very affecting, very POWERFUL music. Handle with care, everyone.

Winter is coming? Shit, dude, winter is here. Take the leap.

⛅︎,

☪️hris & ✂️eith