Howard Devoto walked out of the Buzzcocks in February 1977. He had co-founded the group, helped organize the Sex Pistols gig at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester now credited with igniting British punk, and recorded the Spiral Scratch EP. Then he left, because he wanted to make something different. Within months he had recruited guitarist John McGeoch, bassist Barry Adamson, and drummer Martin Jackson, and Magazine was writing material in a direction that punk had not gone and was unlikely to reach.

The Light Pours Out of Me closes side one of Real Life. Devoto wrote the lyrics, as he did for every track on the album. The music was co-written with McGeoch and, in a detail that charges the song with something extra, Pete Shelley, Devoto's former Buzzcocks bandmate, the partner he had left behind. Martin Jackson drives the track from behind the kit. Barry Adamson holds down a bass line with a grip that won't let go. John McGeoch's guitar moves between discipline and rupture. Dave Formula's keyboards give the whole thing a cold, pressurized grandeur. The album was recorded at The Manor Mobile and Abbey Road Studios in March and April 1978, produced by John Leckie.

Real Life was released by Virgin in June 1978. It reached number 29 on the UK Albums Chart and has since been included in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Critics have pointed to its influence on Radiohead and the Manic Street Preachers. The song's title spent years doing its quiet work before resurfacing in 2022 as the name of the authorized biography of John McGeoch, the guitarist who gave it its sound. That is the kind of afterlife most songs don't get.