Songfacts®:

• John Parr wrote this song with Meat Loaf, who came up with most of the lyrics. It was inspired by a 1982 movie called Cat People, which was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and stars Nastassja Kinski as a seductress who turns into a panther at night (this film is known for its title song by David Bowie).
  
  Parr contributed two songs to Meat Loaf's 1985 album Bad Attitude, and in 1986 they did a duet called "Rock 'n' Roll Mercenaries."
• With Van Halen scoring big on MTV with blatantly sexual videos, Atlantic Records looked to emulate the formula with John Parr, who they positioned as a swaggering rocker à la David Lee Roth. Tim Pope, who also did "Adult Education" for Hall & Oates and "Magic" for The Cars, came up with a rather literal video for "Magical" that played off lyrics like "Love in the shadows, like a smoking gun," and "There's a little bit of bad in every good little girl."
  
  Pope created "The Beaver Club" for the shoot, and inside is a bevy of beauties Parr encounters. There's also Parr coming down from the ceiling wearing giant angel wings - this kind of thing was encouraged in '80s videos.
  
  According to Parr, they also made an X-rated version of the video, which sent Atlantic into a tizzy because they were burning through the budget. Parr and Pope were simply giving them what they asked for.
• Parr hears many musical similarities between this song and Janet Jackson's 1990 #1 hit "Black Cat."