The Unlikely and Mile-High Inspiration for the 1989 Soft Rock Hit “Angelia”

For as long as people have been writing songs, there have been odes named after the song’s subject, whether it’s Beethoven’s “Für Elise”, The Beatles’ “Julia”, The Allman Brothers Band’s “Melissa”, or the 1989 soft-rock hit by Richard Marx, “Angelia”. While it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that all of these songs bear the name of an actual person, that isn’t always the case. Only one of the aforementioned compositions is named after an actual person—John Lennon’s mother, Julia.

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Sometimes, a song’s titular character comes from previous literature, as was the case for Eric Clapton’s song “Layla”. But for the chart-topping ballad “Angelia”, Marx’s inspiration came from a chance encounter approximately 35,000 feet in the sky.

The Mile-High Inspiration for the 1989 Ballad “Angelia”

In the late 1980s, Richard Marx found himself in a predicament all too common with songwriters. He had the music and lyrics of a new song that he felt had the makings of a hit, but he was missing one thing: a title. “I knew that I wanted it to be a girl’s name,” Marx explained years later. “Because I think that when you’re a rock singer, you have to have at least one song in your repertoire that’s just a girl’s name, and I hadn’t had one yet. But I wanted the name to be different and beautiful and memorable.”

Marx mulled over the name for weeks, using “da-da-da-da” as a placeholder for what he knew had to be a four-syllable name. “I was looking through books of names, like when you name your kid, and I couldn’t find anything that just was it. My band and I were on tour, and we were on this horrible flight, exhausted, probably hungover. And I remember the flight attendant came down the aisle with a beverage cart. And as she got closer to me, I noticed two things. One, she was gorgeous. She was really, really beautiful. And when I looked at her, her name tag said ‘A-N-G-E-L-I-A.’”

The singer complimented the flight attendant on her name, who corrected his pronunciation. She pronounced it Angel-ia, like the heavenly figure. In his explanatory video, Marx made a “head exploding” gesture. “I knew it would work,” he said. “The extent of my relationship with the actual woman? She served me a ginger ale.”

One Canada Dry and a Chart-Topping Hit, Please

Richard Marx’s encounter with the beautiful woman who inspired his 1989 hit, “Angelia”, might have been fleeting. But the impact she had on his career was timeless. “That name with those notes in that song, it was magic. So, I owe her a huge debt of gratitude. She doesn’t get any publishing,” he laughed. “She was a perfect stranger. But her name just worked so beautifully on the song.”

And indeed it did. “Angelia”, which Marx released on his second album, Repeat Offender, peaked at No. 2 on the U.S. Cash Box singles chart and No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was a chart-topping hit in Canada and broke into the top 20 in Ireland, Switzerland, Belgium, and New Zealand.

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