Songfacts®:

• The lead single from Violence, "Magazine" was debuted on the January 15, 2018 episode of Jo Whiley's BBC Radio Two show.
• The Editors described the song as "a pointed finger aimed at those in power… some corrupt politician or businessman… a character, and a tongue in cheek poke at the empty posturing and playing to the masses of the power hungry."
• Speaking with Radio X, vocalist Tom Smith recalled the story behind the song:
  
  "Magazine is a funny one because I think I wrote it just after our third record. We never finished it. We tried with Flood, making that aborted fourth record and it fell apart a bit and we went through that divorce… It kind of kept of rearing its head. During the making of this record, it all kind of clicked into place, a kind of 'eureka' moment.
  
  It's a song that's been in the background a long time. I'm scared of saying it's a political song, but it kind of pokes fun at figures of power and that empty posturing… bravado and showmanship that isn't believable."
• The song's music video was shot in Amsterdam by photographer, director and long-term Editors collaborator Rahi Rezvani.
• The song was originally intended for Editors' fourth album until the band's guitarist Chris Urbanowicz left the group in April 2012 due to a difference in musical direction. The change in the makeup of the band caused it to be laid aside indefinitely. Tom Smith explained to NME:
  
  "'Magazine' was written after In This Light and On This Evening when the band were writing songs for album four, but in that time things kind of fell apart for us, we'd never managed to get it to work with the old line-up and since then it's kind of been on the backburner. Maybe it's because it's a song we had around when things were falling apart was a reason to not go back to it, but for whatever reason with this set of songs and at this time I went back and gave it some time – and I rejigged the chorus slightly. It clicked into place again."