Long Live the Angels is the second studio album by Scottish recording artist Emeli Sandé, released on 11 November 2016 by Virgin Records. The lead single from the album, "Hurts", was released on 16 September 2016.[2][3][4][5] Sandé embarked on a European tour to support the album, with dates in the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden.[6]
The album is influenced by Sandé's Zambian background. The song "Tenderly" features her father and cousins, credited as The Serenje Choir, named after the town of Serenje in the Serenje District of Zambia.[7]
Long Live the Angels received generally favorable reviews from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 72, based on 11 reviews.[8] Neil McCormick, writing for The Daily Telegraph, rated the album five out of five stars and declared it "a thrilling second album that affirms Sandé as a singular talent." He noted that "Long Live the Angels is something special, the sound of a gifted, grown-up singer-songwriter using all the tools at her disposal to put her own heart back together."[11]AllMusic editor Andy Kellman felt that the album was "built to maintain her rank [...] Sandé sings with more precision and force without overselling anything. There's also more nuance to her approach [...] Certain listeners might bemoan the shortage of uptempo belters here, but one attentive and thorough listen presents a clear justification."[9]
Chicago Tribune journalist Greg Kot wrote that Long Live the Angels "sounds lean and unadorned when compared to its best-selling predecessor, and is all the better for it. Some songs are stripped to little more than a guitar and voice, but Sande doesn't rely on vocal acrobatics to fill in the gaps. She whispers and roars, breathing with the songs instead of trying to overwhelm them."[10] In his review for The New York Times, Jon Pareles remarked the Sandé's "return is lucid and uncluttered, placing all the expressiveness of her voice at its center. [She] could easily oversing; she has delicacy, volume, graininess, melismas and sly, rhythmic nuances whenever she needs them. But she inhabits her songs rather than overpowering them [...] Intertwining love, faith and music, as Ms. Sandé does through much of the album, is a time-tested idea. But it’s also an abiding and deserving one, especially when it’s carried off with such unfailing grace."[14]
Andy Gill, writing for The Independent, noted that "the more interesting aspects of the album are to be found in less formulaic arrangements, [...] settling into a folk-soul setting clearly influenced by Tracy Chapman."[13]The Observer journalist Bernadette McNulty found that "a repetitive wash of acoustic guitars and consoling choirs dull the emotion, and Sandé is too polite to go for the jugular."[16] Less enthusiastic, Pitchfork contributor Katherine St. Asaph felt that "too much of Long Live the Angels just feels turgid [...] Sandé sings, well and interchangeably, over a dozen tracks of stately but amorphous gloom – the sort of beige dramatics The Guardian dubbed, in 2011, the new boring'."[17] Barry Nicolson from NME wrote that "of course, at 15 tracks long, there’s no shortage of saccharine X Factor balladry either [..] Sandé clearly has the chops to stand out in the sophisticated cross-platform arms race of modern pop music but you still wish she didn’t fall back so readily on cliché."[15]
Chart performance[]
Long Live the Angels debuted at number two on the UK Albums Chart, behind Olly Murs' 24 Hrs. During the first week of the release, it sold 47,512 copies.[18]
Sandé went on two tours to promote the album. The first set of dates were between 2 and 21 October 2016. The second was a larger tour, Long Live the Angels Tour, which went around Europe between 16 March and 27 October 2017.
[9]