Songfacts®:

• This song is about a groove so attractive, it pulls you toward it like a magnet. It's one of the few Earth, Wind & Fire songs the band had no part in writing. They were looking to shift toward a more modern, electronic sound at the time, and called in Martin Page to help. Page, who is from England, had written a song for his group Q-Feel called "Dancing In Heaven (Orbital Be-Bop)," which EW&F mainman Maurice White liked. White asked for something with a similar sound, and Page - who is a huge fan of the band - was happy to comply.
  
  "I quickly ran down the road to a little electrical shop and bought a Fostex 8-track," Page told us. "I tried to emulate the groove of 'Dancing in Heaven,' because I knew that appealed to him. And I wanted to create something that had a mysterious lyric to it, but sounded very contemporary. Earth, Wind & Fire had this magical sense of rhythmic vocals. You didn't have to know what they were singing about, you just had to feel where their syncopations happened."
• In the late '70s, Earth, Wind & Fire made a successful transition into disco, but their journey into '80s electronica was poorly received. "Magnetic" was the biggest hit from the Electric Universe album, which was recorded while the band was falling apart. Maurice White went solo after it came out, releasing a self-titled album in 1985. The group got back together in 1987 with their album Touch the World.
• If Earth, Wind & Fire were ever going to be video stars, this is the one that would have done it. The post-apocalyptic clip features futuristic gladiator battles that look like a cross between RoboCop and Tron. The band had been making videos since 1977, but never got much interest from MTV, which fancied themselves a rock network when they started in 1981 and gave almost no airplay to black artists until Michael Jackson broke through on the network. "Magnetic" was also ignored by MTV, although the clip has since gained a following on YouTube.