57

She Talks to Angels
Black Crowes
1990

Remember Columbia House and BMG?  The 12 CDs for the price of a penny clubs?  Do bears crap in the woods - of course you remember them.  So when I really started getting into music, I would see these advertisements in magazines, and being a 12 or 13 year old kid you pretty much believed anything. So much so that the first time I ever applied for one of these memberships, I literally put like four dollars and ninety-nine cents in an envelope and sent it off in the mail. Needless to say, I never got anything back that first time. After that, I learned you can’t put a bunch of cash in the mail (or at least a bunch of coins), but I also became members of both of those clubs and bought dozens and dozens of CDs through both of those things all the way through my freshman year of college. 

One of those CDs was Shake Your Moneymaker by The Black Crowes. True to my form as an individual song guy and not an album guy, I only really got it for “Hard to Handle,” which I’m pretty sure is their most well-known song (and yeah, probably their best). But I never really listened to the rest of the album; in fact, this is true for a pretty big portion of the albums I purchased through Columbia House, BMG, and anywhere else as a kid:  if I only really knew one or two songs, well, that’s all I really listened to. Why bother with the 8-9 songs that weren't all that great and just get to the songs you cared about?

So it wasn’t until years later that I heard “She Talks to Angels.”  In fact, the first time I heard it wasn’t even The Black Crowes’ version. It was by a half-naked roommate (Bryce, RIP) of my brother Ryan, who woke me up when I stayed the night at their apartment at BYU after I was married (not because I got kicked out of my own place; I had flown there for a wedding or something). I’m laying there on the floor and there’s this guy in nothing but his bath towel just strumming the guitar singing this song. And I’m like, whoa, what is this song?  He clearly did it justice. 

This song is excellent, and I would commend to you this extended acoustic version, which is piano-based (and yes, this version has been released!). I prefer it to the studio version, but it’s hard to beat the one that brings memories of the time when a half-naked stranger serenaded you at the Lord’s university. You won’t have that opportunity, but you can still discover and love this song. 

Other Songs Considered:
Hard To Handle