Angels songwriter reignites feud behind Robbie Williams’ iconic hit almost 30 years after release
IT’S FAIR to say that Robbie Williams’ iconic song Angels is the most famous of his back catalogue and always gets everyone singing.
However, the man who claims to have originally wrote the song almost 30 years ago has reignited the decades old feud this week as he gave fans the inside story in a slew of new TikTok videos.
Irish singer-songwriter Ray Heffernan has always maintained that he wrote the first version of Angels in 1996.
However, although former Take That star Robbie confirmed that he recorded a demo with Ray, he has maintained he rewrote it significantly with Guy Chambers.
The singer also bought the rights to Angels from Ray for £7,500 before it was released in 1997.
However, over the years there has been a lot of bad blood between the two men concerning the song, and this week the feud over the iconic tune was reignited.
Read more on Robbie Williams
It came when Robbie appeared on Radio 2 to talk about his debut album, and said: “I spoke a lot about the album I wanted to make, but the one I did make was Life Through A Lens.
“My memories of making it are, it took me less than two weeks with Guy Chambers to write the whole album.
“That didn’t necessarily mean that it was going to be a success. My album came out and it sold 33,000 copies in three months and that is not what EMI expected to do.”
Continuing with his story, the singer said: “I was about to be dropped and then fortunately I dropped The Angels, didn’t I?
“And it gave me the career that I’ve got today. I’m incredibly grateful for that song.”
But it was this last comment that appeared to really annoy Ray.
Sharing a POV video, the songwriter was seen on his couch reacting in response to Robbie’s comment about Angels, as he wagged his finger at the video and tutted with disapproval.
Since then, Ray has been dropping videos on TikTok, where he has been talking about Angels and how he “signed his rights away” to the song.
He also posted a throwback video of Robbie from 1997 where the singer talked about how he “wrote Angels in a couple of hours”.
Ray captioned the short clip with: “Body language never lies.”
The Sun has reached out to representatives of Robbie Williams for comment.
The last time the pair’s Angels feud was reignited was three years ago – again following Rob’s comments about writing the song.
It came after Ray was left incensed after listening to a Gary Barlow podcast in 2023 where the subject of who wrote Angels popped up again.
Robbie told his former Take That bandmate: “I was off my head basically, the record company has spent a lot of money signing me.
“I made a big song and dance about leaving Take That and wanting to do my own thing, and I hadn’t done anything.
“I thought I’d better get down to it, figure out my voice, and whether I can actually do this … I was at my sister’s house in the garden with a pen and a paper and I thought, right then, I’d better come up with something..(so I wrote) ‘I sit and wait .”…
Robbie then reportedly branded Ray a “fantasist” in the comments section of the podcast, after the songwriter revealed he was unhappy with what had been said.
Ray told The Irish Sun at the time: “How can Robbie Williams call me a fantasist?
“I have always maintained that as a young man, I wrote a song with Robbie, that went on to become his hit song Angels and my story of how that came about has never changed.
“Robbie now says publicly that I’m a fantasist. My question is what part of this am I making up?”
Ray also previously shared with The Irish Sun a picture featuring himself, Robbie and his family on the day he says they wrote the song together.
It was during Christmas 1996 when he met the singer in Dublin’s Globe pub.
Later the same evening, Ray claims that he invited Robbie around to his mum’s place to hear a song he’d just written.
Ray recalled: “We didn’t waste any time, starting that night where I got the guitar out in my mum’s house and played him this song I had been working on.
“This picture was taken the next night day when we played this new song. Robbie loved the song so much, he booked a studio to record his own version the next day.”
A few months later, Ray found out that Robbie was going to record Angels for his next album.
“I contacted Robbie’s management and his people said they would give us an amount of money if I signed a waiver denouncing any rights I had to the song,” he told us.
Robbie later worked on the song Angels with songwriter Guy Chambers.
The song went on to become the singer’s biggest selling single to date AND one of the biggest songs of the 90s.
Speaking about selling the rights to the song, Ray said: “I accepted a deal worth £7,500 to pay me for ‘all and any creative input’ into the song.
“I have the legal documents to prove it. So I am not making this up. You could certainly call me a dreamer in life but not a fantasist. I have never lied about this story, and every part of it is true”.
Back in 2017, Robbie defended the decision to pay Ray for Angels.
“We could have gone to court, and it all would have been down to whether what way the judge wakes up that day out of bed … So I gave him some money, and he went away,” the singer said.