Songfacts®:

• Guy Garvey recorded this tune as the theme song for the BBC1 drama Life. The show co-stars Garvey's wife Rachael Stirling; the Elbow singer got the commission after he met its writer and co-producer, Mike Bartlett.
• This was the second song Garvey submitted. He was informed his first effort was too cheesy, so for his next attempt the Elbow singer wrote something darker. He told NME:
  
  "Many projects, especially for what's essentially a domestic drama, would have said no to a song as gnarly and challenging as 'My Angel.' But Mike and Kate (Hewitt, co-producer) recognized it as a little throne on which to set their outstanding performances with Mike's big-hearted, hilarious and human writing. It's got perhaps the most mawkish guitar solo ever. I imagined I was Joe Cocker on four tabs of acid for that solo."
• The opening lyric, "I'll stand outside your window until I'm furniture for birds," is from an old Elbow song that never got recorded. Garvey explained: "It's the romantic Sleeping Beauty image of waiting for someone for 100 years which, with the heave-ho of the music, gets darker and stalker-ish. I've been obsessed for a while that love and hate are very close together, particularly if you put desire and endeavor in the mix, which Mike's writing captures."