Angie Baby

"Angie Baby" was Helen Reddy's third #1 hit in America (following "I Am Woman" and "Delta Dawn") and one of her more memorable ones. It seems to be about this oddball girl who can't face reality and may be going insane, yet no one is certain what it's about, and Reddy herself refused to comment, saying she enjoyed hearing other listeners' interpretations. This particularly applies to the end of the song, where this local boy makes the moves on Angie and vanishes. It has an uncertainty similar to that of "Hotel California" by the Eagles.

This was the first #1 hit written by future "Undercover Angel" singer Alan O'Day, who was inspired by the Beatles tune Lady Madonna. He explained to Billboard magazine: "I thought, well, I'm gonna write a song about somebody who's growing up with the radio playing in the background of their life, with this rock and roll time we live in... there are songs for all of our emotions, and the radio really speaks for us in a way that nothing else does."

O'Day explained that his heroine started out pretty boring until he started adding layers of weirdness to her character. "The weirder she got, the more interesting the song became," he explained. He finished the song during a Palm Springs vacation with the help of a motel owner who gave him unbiased feedback about Angie's story. She even became protective over her when O'Day suggested he was going to put her through the wringer a little more. "No, she's been through enough," the woman said.