B-side "Just You" Format 45 Label Pacific | Released February 1977 Genre Pop rock | |
Length 4:12 (album version)
3:40 (single version) | ||
"Undercover Angel" was a hit single for singer/songwriter Alan O'Day. Certified gold, it reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (one of 1977's ten biggest hits) and #9 on the Australian Singles Chart.
Contents
Background
In 1977, Warner Bros. Music decided to form a special label, Pacific Records, for their composers who also performed. O'Day was the first artist signed, and his first release was "Undercover Angel." The original vinyl pressing was released with the B-side "Just You".
The song, which O'Day described as a "nocturnal novelette", was released without fanfare in February 1977. Within a few months, it had reached #1 in the U.S., even without an album to support it. O'Day said of the experience, "It's wonderful when you find out what feels right, and then it also feels right to other people. That's a songwriter's dream." O'Day had also composed "Angie Baby", a #1 hit for Helen Reddy; "Undercover Angel" thus landed him in a very exclusive club of singer/songwriters who wrote a chart-topper for themselves and one for another artist.
Storyline
The song begins with a man commiserating his loneliness, when a woman suddenly appears in his bed, and encourages him to make love to her. The rest of the song describes his feelings about her, then he discovers she must leave him, and he is saddened. She tells him to "go find the right one, love her and then, when you look into her eyes you'll see me again."
He then explains that was his story, as apparently he has been singing this song to a woman whom he is trying to seduce, and how he wants to look in her eyes to see if she is the reincarnation of the angel he found.