FEATURE:
Too Good to Be Forgotten: Songs That Are Much More Than a Guilty Pleasure
Journey - Don't Stop Believin'
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I have seen this song appear…
on more than one list that names so-called ‘guilty pleasure’ songs. I am not someone who feels any song should be viewed as a guilty pleasure. Whilst I am not a massive fan of Journey’s 1981 hit, Don’t Stop Believin’, it is a track that has more than its fair share of fans! Despite some feeling it is a little embarrassing embracing a song like this, I think that it is an anthem of the 1980s. Even though I am not enamoured of it, it has gained quite a legacy. Here is some details about a huge track:
“Don't Stop Believin'" is a song by American rock band Journey, originally released as the second single from their seventh album, Escape (1981). It became a number 9 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 on its original release after entering the chart at position 56 on October 31, 1981. In the United Kingdom, the song was not a top 40 hit on its original release, but it reached number 6 in 2010 following the popularity of a cover version by the cast of the American comedy-drama Glee.
Mike DeGagne of AllMusic has described "Don't Stop Believin'" as a "perfect rock song" and an "anthem", featuring "one of the best opening keyboard riffs in rock." It is the best-selling digital track from the 20th century, with over 7 million copies sold in the United States”.
Taken from the underrated 1981 album, Escape, I think one of the reasons Don’t Stop Believin’ has acquired a bit of a bad rap is that it has appeared on shows like Glee and The X Factor. The song is perfect for a Pop wannabe to belt during an audition. I guess it is a shame that, in some ways, the track has been associated with certain shows – though they themselves are popular, so I can’t knock them too much. Maybe it was good to get the song heard again, as Journey’s biggest hit has dipped in and out of popular culture through the decades. In 2010, The Guardian talked about a power ballad that has refused to die:
“When was the last time you heard Don't Stop Believin'? Was it on the radio or in the pub? At a festival or a wedding? Was it sung by Journey themselves, the cast of Glee, a fan on YouTube, a choir of schoolchildren or a drunk friend on a karaoke machine? Boxfresh pop songs such as Tinie Tempah's Pass Out might have a decent claim on being the sound of Britain in 2010 but nothing has wriggled its way into every corner of the culture quite like a slow-burning power ballad that's about to celebrate its 30th birthday.
It was a song inspired by failure. Journey started life as a jazz-rock band in San Francisco in 1973, but they were floundering and hitless when, four years later, they recruited singer Steve Perry, who was having little luck himself. Their fortunes drastically improved, but the sentiments of Don't Stop Believin' harked back to the lean years. Before keyboardist Jonathan Cain joined in 1980, he was also struggling while living on LA's Sunset Boulevard. Each time he called home in despair, his dad would tell him: "Don't stop believing or you're done, dude."
INTHIS PHOTO: Journey photographed in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Putland/Getty Images
The song was written backwards. Cain had nothing but the climactic chorus when he brought the stub of a song to Perry and guitarist Neal Schon, and they worked together on how to get to that moment. They all liked the concept of two lovers fleeing their hometowns by train (a reverse homage to Gladys Knight's Midnight Train to Georgia), and Cain told Perry about his time in LA, hence the "strangers waiting up and down the boulevard" line. "I [saw] that every night in Hollywood," Cain told The Mix magazine. "People coming to LA looking for their dream. We felt that every young person has a dream and sometimes where you grow up isn't where you're destined to be."
In Britain, Don't Stop Believin' flopped, despite being Kerrang!'s single of the year for 1982. In the US, however, it was a substantial hit, the first of many from 1981's multi-platinum Escape album. "Everyone in an American high school in the early 80s probably had a Journey cassette," says Brian Raftery, author of Don't Stop Believin': How Karaoke Conquered the World and Changed My Life. "But then in the early 90s all the cheesy 80s music got rejected and it basically disappeared. Journey were seen as the kind of overblown arena act that grunge and hip-hop were meant to obliterate."
According to Will Byers, a music teacher and former host of the Guardian's School of Rock blog, the structure is the key. Yes, Cain's opening piano chords are potent – as Australian comedy trio Axis of Awesome have demonstrated in a much-watched clip, it's the same chord sequence (I, V, vi, IV) that appears in Take On Me, Under the Bridge, You're Beautiful and Let It Be, the minor vi adding just a touch of yearning. And yes, as Byers points out, each new guitar chord appears on the last quaver of the bar, giving the song an extra push. But these are common strategies. It's the slow burn that makes Don't Stop Believin' so unusually compelling.
"Over time, we learn to appreciate these songs that don't offload all they've got in the first minute – Elton John's Tiny Dancer being another one," says Byers. "You invest some emotion in bothering to listen all the way through”.
I think that Don’t Stop Believin’, like so many tracks at the moment, has lyrics and a general feel that can help and comfort people. That sense of self-belief and hope is a powerful tool at a very difficult time! One can see why it has been used to soundtrack good and positive change. In an article from 2019, NPR highlighted some positives; how the song has been used widely over the years:
“Thirty-eight years after it debuted on the album Escape, "Don't Stop Believin'" is the go-to anthem for perseverance that has itself persevered, successfully riding wave after new wave of media. Though born in the era of rock radio and cassette mixtapes, the song found its real glory at the dawn of binge TV and the smartphone, and it has woven its way into weddings, bar mitzvahs, graduations, the 2005 World Series, The Sopranos and Glee.
By the late 1990s, Perry had left Journey, and the band's career was in the wilderness. But the requests for "Don't Stop Believin'" kept coming.
Charlize Theron roller-skated to the song in her Oscar-winning turn as a serial killer in 2003's Monster. Four years later, The Sopranos ended its pioneering six-season run on HBO with — spoiler alert — a tense sequence involving a diner and parallel parking, soundtracked by "Don't Stop Believin'." Downloads of the track on iTunes soared. In 2009, the earnest high school show choir on Glee covered the song for the first of several times throughout the series' run, sending its download numbers through the roof again.
"Don't Stop Believin'" has been heard on Scrubs, South Park and Family Guy. A string ensemble played it in the Adam Sandler comedy The Wedding Singer. It was the rally song for the Chicago White Sox in the team's 2005 World Series run, and it was the climax of the hit Broadway jukebox musical Rock of Ages. On social media, you can find plenty of photos of stop signs playfully defaced with the title exhortation.
In 2007, Journey flew him to the U.S. for a tryout and hired him — a fairy-tale story chronicled in the 2009 documentary Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey.
Pineda told CBS News in 2012, "Even before I discovered 'Don't Stop Believin,' it has been my motto — you know, to never stop believing in myself. The life that I've gone through, all those hardships, I never stopped believing that someday there is something magical that will happen in my life."
As for Frost — the critic who originally panned Escape in Rolling Stone — she tells NPR that four decades later she's still not a fan but that maybe those streetlight people might — might — have a point.
"You know, I think maybe it helps them celebrate their high school years — or their hopes," she says. "And if it does, what can I tell you? Good for them”.
I think that Don’t Stop Believin’ is one of those songs that will divide people but, far from being a guilty pleasure, it has provided guidance and positivity to many people. The fact it has been used on T.V. shows and films proves it has currency and cultural appeal. I wonder how people will mark forty years of the song at the end of October. I might warm to it by then but, whilst it is not among my favourite tracks, it definitely delivers energy and a catchy chorus! I suppose we do not have bands like Journey anymore; the song is very much a product of the 1980s. Perhaps it is not a song that can age brilliantly because of that but, as we are living through a dark time, the open and no-specific lyrics can be applied to the way we can break through and find some hope at the end of the tunnel! Simply because of that, Don’t Stop Believin’ deserves some respect. Even if you think the song cannot burrow its way into the brain, you only need to spin it once or twice before its big chorus and riffs…
GET stuck in your head.