“Angel from Montgomery” by Bonnie Raitt

"Angel from Montgomery" belongs to John Prine, who wrote it for his 1971 debut, but Bonnie Raitt took it home on Streetlights in 1974, with Jerry Ragovoy producing. Plenty of singers have covered it since, and it's easy to hear why they want it.

Prine wrote it after a friend egged him on to write another song about old people, a nod to his "Hello in There". He'd said his piece on that subject, so he turned it sideways: a middle-aged woman who feels older than her years, hands in the dishwater, aching to get clear of her house and her marriage and waiting on an angel to carry her off. He set it in Montgomery, he figures, because he loved Hank Williams, who had ties to the city. Raitt's reading gives a woman's story to a woman's voice, and it fits like a worn coat.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.