Flashback Friday: Eternal - Angel of Mine | You mean Monica’s song is a cover!?

I was hit with a revelation a few weeks back.

Monica’s “Angel of Mine” was a cover.

[Cue ru-pauls-drag-race_tense.mp3, with a zoom in to me looking utterly shocked and surprised]

In all seriousness, I always figured that Monica’s “Angel of Mine” was a cover, purely because of seeing the credits for the song in her album inlay, and noting that the song was produced by Rodney ‘Darkchild’ Jerkins, but didn’t feature his Darkchild posse of Fred Jerkins III and LaShawn Daniels as co-writers - which was strange to me, given that Darkchild productions always featured Darkchild writers...unless they were covers. But I had absolutely no idea that “Angel of Mine” was a cover of a song originally released by UK girl group Eternal, and that it was a hit single and everything.

I grew up in the UK. And was far more aware of what was on UK radio and the charts back then than I am now. And Eternal was a group I was very aware of. Girl groups always got a lot of air time in the UK. And Eternal got extra attention for their line-up changes; going from a four piece, to a trio, and then a duo before calling it a day. But I do not remember hearing or seeing “Angel of Mine” AT ALL, and the song was top 10 hit in the UK. So radio had to have been running it up, and Eternal had to have been on Top of the Pops and all dem shows performing the song. And yet, I did not hear it, and I did not see it.

Meanwhile, Monica’s cover of the song? It went to number 1 on the US Billboard Hot 100. So America was hearing it everywhere. But even in the UK, I was hearing it everywhere. There was no escaping Monica in 1998 and 1999, between “The Boy Is Mine”, “The First Night”, and “Angel of Mine” - all of which went to number 1 on the US Billboard Hot 100.

I wonder how well known the original version of “Angel of Mine” was outside of the US, for Monica to have released her cover not even a year after Eternal had released theirs. And I know for sure that there are probably a bunch of people who have no idea Monica’s version of the song is even a cover at all.