There's more than a sprinkling of magic about this week's playlist, compiled from your nominations, over the past week, of songs about angels.
How could we refuse a number called Guardian Angels (incidentally also the name of a choir consisting of colleagues – available for weddings, bar mitzvahs, etc)? Pioneering jazz guitarist John McLaughlin's 1978 track is less than a minute long, yet has wings and uplift.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves: any discussion of angels must first acknowledge their role in religious faith. New Orleans preacher Rev Utah Smith demonstrates his passionately held beliefs on (I Got) Two Wings, self-published in 1947 on his own Two Winged Temple label. Pointing to a fascinating blog about Smith, RR nominator Pairubu says: "The rev is bound for angeldom, and to make sure, he's got giant cardboard wings ready! Where gospel meets the Velvet Underground!" But you don't need to be explicitly religious. There's a religiosity to Lamb's music, and Gabriel aspires to bring us closer to God.
Ron Sexsmith wrote Speaking with the Angel about his infant son after his wife said baby noises were conversations with angels. Bless. But what do angels sound like? Ed Harcourt has the correct answer: yes – it's the theremin. That's what's making that floaty, wobbly sound on his Angels on Your Body, giving the track a dreamy innocence – yet it's really a song of lust.
"There are loads of doo-wop "angel" songs," notes RR commenter 9hairs9knots, before nominating a brace. But there was a consensus of adoration for the Penguins' 1955 treat Earth Angel, which RR stalwart RockingMitch described as "a superb example of vocal group R&B which, after 1969, became known as 'doo-wop'".
Dusty Springfield's favourite singer Evie Sands was nominated by treefrogdemon, who says: "Lots of recommends for different versions of Angel of the Morning, but the first recording of the song was by Evie Sands and it was produced by Chip Taylor, who wrote it. Unfortunately for Evie the record company went bust a couple of weeks later. But I think, morally, Evie is yer angel." From the same era, Bobbie Gentry's I Saw an Angel Die is a lovely example of the many songs likening a loved one to an angel – and the feeling desolation when a loved one departs.
With distorted guitars set to woozy, dream-popsters Mazzy Star take it slow in Be My Angel. Despite the title, it's not clear from Hope Sandoval's lyrics whether the angel is the narrator or her lover. The late Dory Previn, meanwhile, blurs the line between good and evil in Angels and Devils the Following Day, her ex-lovers "as different as heaven and hell" but "the one who was gentle hurt me much more/ than the one who was rough and made love on the floor".
Iron and Wine's lyrically opaque Pagan Angel and a Borrowed Car is a wood-cabin raga. I'm not sure what it's about, but it has the magic. As RR commenter lonniej puts it, it's "either inspired poetry or pretentious crap … but it sounds good".
Let's end with a sublime piece of music whose composer imagined the sound of angels:
In Paradisum from The Requiem Setting by Gabriel Fauré. RR nominator BeltwayBandit says of it: "Close your eyes and you really do feel like you are floating in a cloud surrounded by an angelic choir … it's just staggeringly, hypnotically beautiful."
Guardian Angels – John McLaughlin
(I Got) Two Wings – Rev Utah Smith
Speaking with the Angel – Ron Sexsmith
Angels on your Body – Ed Harcourt
Angel of the Morning – Evie Sands
I Saw an Angel Die – Bobbie Gentry
Angels and Devils the Following Day – Dory Previn
Pagan Angel and a Borrowed Car – Iron and Wine
* Listen to these songs on a YouTube playlist
* Read all the readers' recommendations on last week's blog, from which I've selected the songs above
* Here's a Spotify playlist containing readers' recommendations on this theme
* We'll reveal the next Readers Recommend topic at guardian.co.uk/readersrecommend at 10pm on Thursday.
