Songwriters write songs for different reasons. According to Willie Nelson, his 1981 hit, “Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground,”  was written during the time he and his third wife Connie,  were experiencing trouble in their marriage.

Willie comments, “The idea for the song was a pretty general theme and the idea could and was applied to a lot of different situations.  Lots of people applied that song to their individual situations; people could relate the song to a love affair, to some who had died, or to someone they had lost for whatever reason. The song could have several different meanings  and it did, to a lot of people who never had any idea why I wrote that song.”

Nelson said he wrote “Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground” in 1976 but didn’t release it until four years later. He said, “Timing has a lot to do with releasing a song. If you release a good song at the wrong time, nothing happens and you’ve lost a good song. A lot of times, I keep a song for awhile before releasing it, because I have to think the song has a chance to make it and timing has a lot to do with that. If a good song is released at the wrong time and it gets lost in the shuffle, then you always wish you had waited for a better time so the song would have had a better chance to make it.”

 “Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground” was the second single from Nelson’s “Honeysuckle Rose” album and entered the country music charts  January 10^th, 1981. It was in the number one spot the week of March 21^st. It was his 65^th charted single and his tenth number one.

Doug Davis
Country Music Classics