McLachlan wrote this song about a drug-addict's struggles with the world. The "angel" symbolizes the drugs the addict gives in to repeatedly.
As McLachlan explained on VH1 Storytellers, this song is about the Smashing Pumpkins touring keyboard player Jonathan Melvoin, who overdosed on heroin and died in 1996. McLachlan didn't know him and was never a heavy drug user herself, but when she read about his death in Rolling Stone, she felt a connection, as she had just come off two years on the road where "there's nothing constant but everything becomes the same."
On the same Storytellers show, McLachlan said that this song only took a few hours to write, stating it was a "very easy labor."
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