High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! "Angel" (sometimes mis-titled as "In the Arms of the Angel" or simply "Arms of the Angel") is a song by Sarah McLachlan that originally appeared on her 1997 album Surfacing. As McLachlan explained on VH1 Storytellers, the song is about the Smashing Pumpkins touring keyboard player Jonathan Melvoin, who overdosed on heroin and died in 1996.