Waiting On An Angel | Chords + Lyrics (tune down 1 tone)
Intro
| 3/4 C | C/B | Am7 | G Gsus4 |
| C | C/B | Am7 | G5 (hold) |
Verse 1
||: C | C/B | Am7 | G Gsus4 :||
Waiting on an angel.
One to carry me home.
Hope you come to see me soon.
| F | G | Am | Am7/E | F | G |
‘Cause I don’t wanna go alone, I don’t wanna go alone.
Instrumental 1
||: C | C/B | Am7 | G Gsus4 :||
Verse 2
||: C | C/B | Am7 | G Gsus4 :||
Now, angel, won’t you come by me?
Angel, hear my plea.
Take my hand, lift me up.
| F | G | Am | Am7/E | F | G | C | C/E |
So that I can fly with thee, so that I can fly with thee.
Bridge 1
| F | G | Am | Am/E |
And I’m waiting on an angel.
| F | G | C | C/E |
And I know it won’t be long.
| F | G | Am | Am/E |
To find myself a resting place.
| F | G | C | C/E | F | G |
In my angel’s arms, in my angel’s arms.
Instrumental 2
||: C | C/B | Am7 | G Gsus4 :||
Verse 3
||: C | C/B | Am7 | G Gsus4 :||
So speak kind to a stranger.
‘Cause you’ll never know.
It just might be an angel.
| F | G | Am | Am7/E | F | G | C | C/E |
Come, oh, knocking at your door, come knocking at your door.
Bridge 2
| F | G | Am | Am/E |
And I’m waiting on an angel.
| F | G | C | C/E |
And I know it won’t be long.
| F | G | Am | Am/E |
To find myself a resting place.
| F | G | C | C/E | F | G |
In my angel’s arms, oh, in my angel’s arms, oh, arms
Instrumental 3
||: C | C/B | Am7 | G Gsus4 :||
Verse 4
||: C | C/B | Am7 | G Gsus4 :||
Waiting on an angel.
One to carry me home.
Hope you come and see me soon.
| F | G | C | C/E |
‘Cause I don’t wanna go alone.
| F | G | C | C/E |
I don’t wanna go alone, don’t wanna go.
| F | G | C |
I don’t wanna go alone.
Waiting On An Angel chords, progressions, and TAB
Played in 3/4, Ben Harper‘s Waiting On An Angel uses common open-position chords, although if you try to play along, you’ll soon realize that he’s tuned down all strings a tone, making a C chord sound like a Bb.
To get on the same frequency as Ben, use my chromatic tuner. Once sorted, you can play along using the chords and lyrics above. Here’s TAB for Waiting On An Angel’s intro, verse, and instrumental sections chords.

Apart from these 8 bars, which are perfect for the beginner guitarist btw. There’s also a bridge sections, it’s easy as well and looks like this:

Using these two sections and the TAB above, you can easily work out how to play Waiting On An Angel yourself.
On a final note, you may be thinking, “I will never be able to write a song like this”, how does he do it? Well, songwriting is more of a craft than anything. Very often a writer takes an already existing song and rewrites it.
Sometimes, ideas come to them, but that’s usually the same thing, they just can’t point out what song they’re rewriting.
To me, it’s clear that Ben has rewritten the old jazz standard My Favorite Things. Did he do it consciously or not? Well, let me put it this way; does it matter?
What really matters is that you can do this too, you just have to start, and then keep going.
Waiting On An Angel chords | Related pages
Five similar tunes
- Ain’t No Sunshine chords
- Another Lonely Day chords
- The Drugs Don’t Work chords
- Lean On Me chords
- Wonderful Tonight chords
Ben Harper
Ben Harper is an American roots musician who stretched his appeal around the globe by recording covers of Sexual Healing and The Drugs Don’t Work.
Harper’s first album, Welcome To The Cruel World (94), was followed by Fight For Your Mind only a year later.