Colin Vearncombe (stage name: Black) wrote this song after breaking up with his first wife. Six years after releasing this hit he said: "It's another one of life's rich ironies that because my first marriage messed up in a very big way, I ended up writing a couple of songs that were the most successful I've ever written. My ex-wife is indirectly responsible for me having a hit, it makes me smile".

So this song is about how he feels after his rupture: Alone, sad. And this is an interpretation of the lyrics that I came across on the Internet. I think this quite sums it up quite well:

I think this is about feeling so alone and desperately unhappy, that you literally feel you are '"alone out to sea'" with nobody steering your boat. You're out in the sunshine, on a beautiful day, and you feel that even the 'sun and heat hate you".

You feel your dreams 'hang in the air' because you don't know if you'll ever see them come to fruition. Your 'blue = sad eye'. sees magic that isn't felt. I think that even though this is a desperately sad song, the writer of it, seems to write/sing that it's a wonderful life over and over as almost a mantra, as if to remind himself, or even to comment on the irony of his mood. I also wonder whether the writer is also referring to an old movie, by the same name, about a man who didn't realise what he had. This is such a beautiful song. It's very clever. Sad lyrics teamed with tropical beach carefree sounding music. Another hint of intentional irony perhaps, that all may not be what it outwardly seems. (signed as 'thelydstar')