Damaged Angel:When I was eleven I used to love this pretty song with a sad lyric called “Angel in Blue” by the J. Geils Band (listen). Despite my youth, I was actually fully aware that the tune is about the singer’s soft spot for a heavy-hearted stripper — and that after meeting her, he realizes that girl’s got some issues. Heavy issues. What I didn’t understand back in 1981 was what those issues were or why she was so sad.
I still love the song and the emotional space it creates as much as I did back then, but listening to the lyrics now definitely fills in the pieces of the picture that I didn’t really appreciate almost 30 years ago. It’s a familiar story: the beautiful but unavailable, inaccessible girl, damaged used by the shallow people in her life, triggers the sentimental guy’s “rescue the damsel in distress” response. In this case, the really, really hot damsel. My favourite line is this one, which has to be heard to fully appreciate:
When I whispered I thought I could love her, she just said, “Baby, don’t even bother to try.” And I watched as she spoke, her words chilled my bones.
Part way through writing this it occurs to me that the song could have a secondary meaning as a comment on the downfall of America. The damsel, the fallen angel, is a metaphor for America, a country that has drifted far from its roots, lost its way, abandoned its dreams and been drained of its spirit. My supporting evidence for this hypothesis is that the only colours referenced in the song are red (her blouse), white (her boots) and blue (her mood); the proximity of the story’s location (Chesapeake Bay) to the nation’s capital; and the repeated referencing to dreams, the ultimate american theme. ♦
