Could It Be Magic

The song was initially released in 1971 by Featherbed (a group of session musicians featuring Barry Manilow), produced and co-written by Tony Orlando. It was later re-recorded as a Manilow solo track on his first album released in 1973 on Bell Records. It was then reworked in 1975 and released as a single from his eponymous album re-issued by Arista Records. The 1975 release became Manilow's third hit after "Mandy" and "It's A Miracle".


The song has been recorded by a number of other artists over the years, most successfully by Donna Summer in 1976 and by Take That in 1992. The version by Take That won the Brit Award for British Single in 1993.

Composition and recordings[edit]

Manilow wrote "Could It Be Magic" one night while he was living in a studio apartment on 27th Street in Manhattan. He had been playing Chopin on the piano that afternoon, and the tune inspired by Chopin then came to him.^[2] Manilow built the song by elaborating on part of Chopin's Prelude Op. 28, No. 20, and the source of the inspiration is made explicit in Manilow's own recording, which quotes directly eight bars of Prelude No. 20 at the start, and ends the same way by returning to the Prelude.^[3] The basic shape of the song is that of a single great crescendo;^[4] as Manilow explained, he wanted the song to "build and build" like the Beatles's "Hey Jude" "until you think you can't take it anymore. It should be a musical orgasm."^[5]


Manilow sent a cassette tape of his tune to his collaborator Adrienne Anderson, who responded enthusiastically to the song, as did Tony Orlando,^[2] vice-president of Columbia/CBS Music, who also contributed lyrics to the version of the song he then produced for the Featherbed, which is significantly different from the solo version Manilow himself had envisioned.^[2]

Featherbed original version[edit]

Barry Manilow was signed by Tony Orlando to New York City-based Bell Records in 1969,^[6] and Orlando produced a few songs released under the name of Featherbed, a "ghost" group consisting of session musicians including Manilow. This ensemble had a minor success with "Amy" in 1971, a song written by Anderson and performed by Manilow.^[7] Manilow at that stage had only composed or arranged commercial jingles, and the arrangement of the backing track for "Could It Be Magic" was left to Orlando after they had a discussion about the song's arrangement. Although Manilow had envisioned a song that builds up like "Hey Jude", Orlando produced and arranged it instead as an uptempo bubblegum pop single with a dance beat and cowbells that more resembled Orlando's own "Knock Three Times".^[8]


This early version of "Magic" was released as a song by Featherbed on the Bell Records label.^[9][10] Manilow hated the Orlando arrangement in Featherbed's version so severely that, as he has said in numerous subsequent interviews, he was appreciative of the fact that the song went nowhere on the charts. However, he has been quoted in recent years as having somewhat softened his opinion of the track, saying it's "kind of catchy". Apart from the chorus, the lyrics of Featherbed's recording have nothing to do with the version Manilow himself recorded for his debut album in 1973 and in 1975.