Sometimes a band’s biggest hit is the song nobody ever expected to be a success in the first place. When Marty Balin first wrote “Miracles,” for example, the other members of Jefferson Starship weren’t huge fans of the tune…but it went on to become the band’s highest charting single, even outperforming their most popular tunes as Jefferson Airplane. (They would have even more success on the charts in the future as Starship, but that’s another story.)
Released as a single from Jefferson Starship’s 1975 album Red Octopus, “Miracles” peaked at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100. At first listen, it sounds pretty much like a straightforward love song:
Love is a magic word, ooh, yeah (Baby)
Few ever find in a lifetime
But from that very first look in your eyes
I knew you and I had but one heart (Baby)
But as Balin told Songwriter Universe in 2018, the song was partly inspired by an Indian guru known as a miracle worker.
“I had heard this Indian chanting and singing, and I found out it was this avatar called Sathya Sai Baba from India,” Balin said.
“So I got involved in reading about him, listening to his tapes of his singing,” he continued. “I was playing guitar one day, and I thought of him. And then I was reading Persian poetry and the way they talked about God, but they [were also talking] about a woman. They were talking about God when you caress a woman…they were caressing God’s holiness or something. And I just loved that idea. So I kind of wrote that song, having the avatar in mind, and the idea of speaking to a woman, but speaking to a God actually.”
Photo by Michael Putland on Getty Images
Unfortunately, the rest of the band was less than enthusiastic when they heard “Miracles” for the first time.
“Everybody went, ‘I don’t know about that. That’s pretty weird, man,'” Balin was quoted as saying in the book Got a Revolution!: The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson Airplane.
“I was really worried; nobody liked it,” Balin added. “But I told myself, after about five days, ‘Maybe they’re wrong.'”
Of course, Balin turned out to be right. The success of “Miracles” helped make Red Octopus Jefferson Starship/Airplane’s only #1 album: It landed at the top of the Billboard Hot 200 on September 6, 1975, where it stayed for four weeks.
And even if Grace Slick never really came around to loving “Miracles,” she would end up hating Starship’s three #1 hits — “Sara,” “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” and “We Built This City” — even more.
“I thought they were ridiculous,” she told The Guardian in 2025. “There isn’t a city built on rock and roll! Los Angeles was built on oil and oranges and the movie business…stupid song. But our producer said, ‘Yeah, but it’s a hit.’ And he was right.”
Related: 1967 Rock Classic, Ranked Among ‘Greatest Songs of All Time,’ Was Written in an Hour on a Broken Piano
