 Manilow produced and co-arranged the next, Joe Renzetti arranged the strings, slower-tempo version on his debut album, "Barry Manilow" in 1973.Six months later, former Columbia Records president Clive Davis would take over Bell Records and merge it into Arista with all the other Columbia Pictures-owned labels such as Amy, Mala, Colpix, and Colgems, to name a few.Most of the artists at Bell were dropped during the merger, but due to the song's popularity, Manilow was brought over to Arista in the spring of 1974 and "Could It Be Magic" was re-released as a single a year later—a full two years after it had been originally recorded, where it reached number 6 in the United States.