Many people mistake America's tune "A Horse With No Name" for a Neil Young song, due to the remarkable similarity of Bunnell's vocals to Young's. Ironically, "Horse" replaced Young's single "Heart of Gold" at US #1 in 1972.

America's album View From The Ground was released in July 1982 and finally succeeded in bringing the band back to commercial success. It was former Argent frontman Russ Ballard who produced and played most of the instruments on a song he wrote especially for the band, called "You Can Do Magic". America's hit single You Can Do Magic rose quickly through the pop charts, and reached as high as #8 on the Billboard pop singles chart for a number of weeks in October 1982, the band's first major hit in seven years.America's songs were featured on several soundtracks during the 80's. America contributed several tracks to The Last Unicorn soundtrack in 1982. America also recorded "Love Comes Without Warning" for the 1984 Steve Martin comedy, The Lonely Guy.America's Beckley and Bunnell spent the latter half of the 1980s focusing on their live performances. They performed well over 100 times a year around the world. While America was a hot concert ticket, they were unable to land a recording contract at the time.