The use of this song in Sofia Coppola's first film The Virgin Suicides is one of those moments when music is just beautifully processed for the purposes of cinema, enhancing both the song and scene at the same time and indelibly stamping both into your consciousness as a result. Did so for me at any rate.
'She was the still point of the turning world man. I never got over that girl. Never.'
This song and clip say everything about the giddy hormonal rush of teenage years. I had three years of it myself at least thirty five years back or more of feeling that I was being shaken up and down like a coca cola bottle all day and night and frankly I'm very glad it's all in the deep and distance past. This track, from Heart's first album Steamboat Annie is just perfect for the uncontrollable emotional eruption the scene wants to convey.
The song itself is an early example of AOR at its absolute best, slightly more honest and real than much of that genre. It's not a strain of music you want to overdose on, but a track like this conveys the sense of what a joy it might have been to be heading towards your graduation years in the suburban American hinterland in the mid-seventies. Of course it all ended in tears in this particular movie. But hey, it's only a story.
Magic Man was a Top 10 hit for the band and deservedly so. They followed it up with the title track of the album and it fared less well, stalling just outside the Top 40. There's definitely a lilt of Karen Carpenter about the vocals here. The band clearly loved the song as it featured in three versions in different forms on the album which is a bit much frankly should you choose to listen to it all the way through. Still the is a very fine record, much preferable to me to their eighties output where their songs, hair outfits and egos sprouted monstrously to horrible effect.
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