1991 · Behind the Songs
Written in waltz time, it became the first George Michael single to miss the British Top 40.
“Cowboys and Angels” was released on 18 March 1991 as the fifth single from Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 (1990). Michael wrote it in March 1989 and produced it himself. The recording is unusual on several counts: it is written in waltz time, its saxophone solo is played by Andy Hamilton, and at 7:14 the album version was the longest single he had released to that date. The radio edit, at 4:34, drops a 42-second piano introduction and a whole verse, and the single’s B-side was “Something to Save”.
The chart story tells of an artist deliberately stepping away from the hit machine. It peaked at number 45 on the UK singles chart, the first single of his solo career to miss the Top 40, continuing a pattern in which each single from the album finished lower than its predecessor. In a 2004 interview with Attitude, Michael said the song was written about a short-lived love triangle; NME’s James Brown called it his “finest 45 for years”, and in 2021 The Guardian placed it 12th in its ranking of George Michael’s 30 greatest songs.