Songfacts®:

• This song of possibility was written by Yes members Jon Anderson, Trevor Rabin and Chris Squire. Squire wrote the foundation of the song on the piano, and Rabin added the intro. Regarding his role in the song, Jon Anderson told Songfacts, "That was really Chris and Trevor. Chris wrote most of the lyrics of that. I just became more like the singalong."
• In a Songfacts interview with Chris Squire, he said of this song: "That was a message of hope, and just making a way through the world looking for the good route - the one that suits you and leads on to better things."
• 90125 was not conceived as a Yes album. Most of the songs were worked up by the South African guitarist Trevor Rabin, who was looking for a record deal. Atlantic Records paired him with former Yes members Chris Squire (bass) and Alan White (drums), who were working on their own project. With the addition of keyboard player Tony Kaye, they formed a band called Cinema and started putting the album together. To fill the lead singer void, they contacted Jon Anderson, who had left Yes in 1980. When he accepted the gig, it made since to release the album as Yes, and it became their most successful, selling over 3 million copies in America and yielding their biggest hit, "Owner Of A Lonely Heart."
• By this time, Yes had broken through on MTV with videos for their 90125 tracks "Owner Of A Lonely Heart" and "Leave It," so they made one for "It Can Happen" as well, showing the band performing the song on a fancy set, sporting the latest fashions. They weren't cut out to be video stars. In the book MTV Ruled the World - The Early Years of Music Video, Jon Anderson shared his thoughts on transitioning to the music video age: "Even though the song may have been very good, the videos, generally... 50% of the videos weren't very good, because it wasn't their forte. It wasn't what you become a rock musician for - to make videos? That's what movie stars do or pop stars or whatever."