Songfacts®:

• This ode to jealousy in the face of "the other man" was penned by X Factor vocal coach Kotecha and Swedish songwriters Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub. They are the same trio who also penned One Direction's singles, "What Makes You Beautiful" and "One Thing."
• Falk told Examiner.com how the ballad came to be written: "All of the songs that we do have kind of a signature guitar riff to them," he said. "It was the same thing with 'I Wish.' We just started to play around with some chords, and the riff came up, and we found the melody.
  
  That was a bit of a trick to make the chorus really lift… But it came more from singing and playing than 'mathematic songwriting.' I played the guitar; the other guys [Yacoub and Kotecha] just sang it. And we came up with the song that way."