What is certain is that songs don't write themselves. No, you have to turn up and work on them, knowing that you might get lucky and a finished one will seemingly just pop out of nowhere.

The real likelihood however is that mostly you will be in it for the long haul, putting in the necessary hours and honing the original idea until the structure and the feel are suddenly just right.

And then even when you get to that stage, a feeling of doubt may appear, telling you that what you have is good... but not great.

And with that you sometimes decide to leave the idea, perhaps come back to it another time. Charlie and I go through that particular process with our songs most often. We certainly went through that and so much more with Magic - Track 1 on our forthcoming album Walk Between Worlds.

That said, during the process sometimes inexplicable events happen, and an idea or two does comes flying out of somewhere or other, indeed as if by magic.

The job is to be alert enough to know how to catch that fleeting expression of mental energy. I guess that really is what artists are meant to do.

It was by accident that our producer Andy Wright and Gavin Goldberg got to hear a previous demo of Magic, first worked on over a decade ago, it went under another title entirely back then.

Charlie and I had forgotten all about it, given up on it even?

They then convinced us that the song definitely had "the magic" and that we absolutely needed to return to it. To give it one more go! To find the missing piece that until then had eluded us.

It is good to work hard. The reward feels more valid in the end. Meanwhile, I cannot wait to play Magic live. The walls will shake!

Jim Kerr
16th December 2017

JK: Last Wednesday night was the fortieth anniversary of our first ever gig. And – you know – we didn't do anything. [Laughs] We texted each other... we didn't even do that! [Laughs] I was thinking – this had been on the horizon for a long time – and finally when we went with Magic, the character in the song is kind of us. I was thinking of when we were starting a band. We weren't in London, we were in Glasgow – and as much as Glasgow's amazing, it's an amazing scene - it wasn't then. We didn't know anyone who was in a band, we didn't know anyone who'd written their own songs, there was no teacher, you couldn't go on YouTube and download a lesson. So where did we get the chutzpah to think what we were doing was on? I really did believe it was on. And people said "You must be an arrogant so-and-so." And I wasn't , because you could hear what was coming out of his amp. And you just described it.
SL: I tell you what was interesting to me as well was - it sort of reminds me of something. And it took me ages before I got there. Lyrically it reminds me a little bit of Richard Ashcroft who does that lonely man with a belief.
JK: You still need that. Lou Reed, and he said it, it's definitely about faith. Not in the religious way. "You need a busload of faith to get by," Lou Reed said, a great line. And there's a link to another song at the end, Sense Of Discovery, which is a more wizened man [Laughs], still has faith but kind of a bit beaten up. But not as easily hyped. So going back to Magic, finally, I thought I can believe in this. And I can put this across. And as Charlie said, the tune was always there. But we've got a good team around us, and they go through things, and they kick the tires and they go like "Nah" or else they go "What are you doing? This is a great thing here. Pursue it." It's good to have that.

Jim Kerr, Charlie Burchill and Steve Lamacq
Steve Lamacq Show
BBC Radio 6
24th January 2018

JK: We are getting a great reaction from those songs, but you always get someone saying, "I heard about those songs years ago, they're old songs you are churning out." And I'm like, "Hang on a minute you dick." (Laughs) It’s excellent when songs announce themselves, and they just come and go. The song Magic, for instance, was always pretty much there, but sometimes something is missing, and you don’t know what it is, Sense of Discovery was the same. Sometimes the language of the song doesn’t feel right for the times, or there are times when you hear the song later through different ears, and you think it feels right now."

Jim Kerr and Mark Millar
xsnoize.com
January 2018

Jim Kerr
Walk Between Worlds EPK
February 2018

AW: "I was always big fan of Simple Minds growing up – I listened to them back when I was playing keyboards in my own bands and I was always inspired by their work. So it’s been very natural to reflect their past, and those earlier incarnations, without needing to think much about it."

Andy Wright and Gavin Goldberg
Producers Interview
March 2018