Long Live the Angels | ||||
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Studio album by Emeli Sandé | ||||
Released | 11 November 2016 | |||
Recorded | 2013 – August 2016 | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 51:56 | |||
Label | Virgin | |||
Producer |
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Emeli Sandé chronology | ||||
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Deluxe cover | ||||
Singles from Long Live the Angels | ||||
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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. Sandé is scheduled to begin a European tour to support the album, with dates in the United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Germany and Sweden.
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.
Long Live the Angels received generally favorable reviews from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 72, based on 11 reviews.
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." Andy Gill, writing for The Independent, felt 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."
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.
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.