Songfacts®:

• This melodic club tune is the lead single by Senegalese-American R&B singer/rapper Akon, from his fourth studio album, titled Stadium. The single was released to US radio stations on September 14, 2010.
• The song finds Akon singing about an "angel" that "got that whole place glowing" with her cherubic qualities.
• This synthy offering was produced by French dancemeister David Guetta. The pair previously collaborated on Guetta's hit single, "Sexy Bitch."
• The tracks on Stadium are immersed in a worldly mix of grooves and this song embodies the direction Akon took for the album. He told MTV News: "The music took a turn on its own. I was always the kind of person that just do what I love to do. But as you grow, you experience different things. You start travelling, you start collaborating with different people [and] you start experiencing life bigger than just here. And I think that's what curved my music just to start growing bigger: 'cause I started getting bigger, the music kind of grew with it. I started creating elements that fit my lifestyle as I was living it now, 'cause I was the type of artist that created my music based from my experience. And nothing has changed," he added. "I'm still that type of artist. I'm always in Europe, always in Asia, always in India, always in Japan, always in Africa, the UK, France, and this is the kind of music that I'm exposed to."
• This marked the twelfth different composition entitled "Angel" to have landed on the Hot 100. The other 11 were by:
  1965, #51, Johnny Tillotson
  1972, #40, Rod Stewart
  1973, #20, Aretha Franklin
  1985, # 5, Madonna
  1988, # 3, Aerosmith
  1993, #18, Jon Secada
  1999, # 4, Sarah McLachlan
  2001, # 1, Shaggy
  2001, #70, Lionel Richie
  2003, #20, Amanda Perez
  2008, #63, Natasha Bedingfield.
  An honorary mention also goes to the pluralized "Angels," which was a #41 hit for Robbie Williams in 2000 and returned to the Hot 100 in 2008 when David Archuleta's cover peaked at #89.
• A week after this song dropped out of the Hot 100, it re-entered at #56 as a result of a performance by Akon on CBS' The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show.