City of Angels is an album by the
Motown soul group
The Miracles, released on Motown Records' Tamla label in September 1975. The group's fourth album recorded after replacing lead singer
Smokey Robinson with
Billy Griffin in 1972,
City of Angels is a
concept album, depicting of a man from "Anytown, U.S.A." who follows his estranged girlfriend Charlotte to
Los Angeles, where she has gone in hopes of becoming a star. All of the tracks on the album were written by Billy Griffin and Miracles bass singer
Pete Moore.
Freddie Perren and Moore served as the album's producers.The album's first single, "
Love Machine", peaked at number-one on the
Billboard Hot 100 on March 6, 1976, and was a multi-million-selling platinum single,
[3] becoming the most successful single of The Miracles' career. Its success coincided with the rise of the
disco craze of the late 1970s. Another song on
City of Angels, "Ain't Nobody Straight in L.A.", caused controversy due to addressing the subject of
homosexuality:
"Ain't nobody straight in L.A./It seems that everybody is gay."[4]City of Angels reached 33 on the
Billboard 200 albums chart in the United States, and peaked at number 29 on the Billboard Black Albums chart.
[5] The Miracles'
City Of Angels was also a Platinum album with over one million records sold.
[3]The song "Overture" from that album, co-written by Moore and Billy Griffin, was used as the official theme on Radio Monte Carlo in France from 1978 to 1979.
[6] While not available on CD in the U.S. until more recently,
City of Angels was available in its entirety on the Motown import release,
The Miracles – The Essential Collection.
I do not own the rights to the song!
