Songfacts®:

• This is the opening track of Walk Between Worlds, the 17th album released by Simple Minds. There's a recurring theme that runs through the record. Vocalist Jim Kerr explained to HMV.com:
  
  "Each of the songs are distinctive, but there are maybe two or three songs that reflect on some of the same things. When I say that there are a few songs about faith, I don't mean it in a religious sense, but I think that just to cope and get by we all need an idea of faith. On 'Magic' it's that kind of faith you have when you're a young buck with everything to prove, and I was channeling back into the kind of person I thought I was when I was 18 or 19."
• "It's from a young person's point of view," Jim Kerr explained. "When we were putting the band together, the odds of fame and success, the odds of making this thing work were stacked against us."
  
  The last song on the album, "Sense Of Discovery," has a similar subject matter but from the perspective of an older person.
• 2018 was a tumultuous and divisive time politically, but Simple Minds kept it positive with this track and others from the album. "I transcribe what I hear in the music," Jim Kerr said in a Songfacts interview. "Apart from that, what can I tell you about all that other stuff that you don't already know? Art takes your feelings and thoughts above that. You kind of avoid the gravity."