It was a hit there back in , and it's had so many phases that even its comebacks have had comebacks. But over here it stalled at No 62 on its first release in February and didn't begin to register in the pop psyche until relatively recently. Its path from obscurity to ubiquity mirrors its unorthodox structure: the slow build towards the last-minute eruption.
It was a song inspired by failure. Journey started life as a jazz-rock band in San Francisco in , 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. Each time he called home in despair, his dad would tell him: "Don't stop believing or you're done, dude. 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.
We felt that every young person has a dream and sometimes where you grow up isn't where you're destined to be. In the US, however, it was a substantial hit, the first of many from 's multi-platinum Escape album. Journey were seen as the kind of overblown arena act that grunge and hip-hop were meant to obliterate. The band weren't best-placed to argue otherwise.
Perry left in , and then again after a brief reunion in the mids, confirming the sense that Journey were yesterday's men. But a few years ago, Raftery started noticing younger people singing Don't Stop Believin' at karaoke. And secondly, why? I think that younger people aren't aware of the stigma. They just think it's another awesomely cheesy anthem. Cain dates the song's resurgence back to its tongue-in-cheek cameo in the Adam Sandler comedy The Wedding Singer.
After that, other soundtrack co-ordinators turned to Journey for a song that was both humorously retro and genuinely stirring. It appeared in a pivotal montage in Scrubs and a karaoke scene in Family Guy And then, in , came The Sopranos. Series creator David Chase has never explained why he wanted Don't Stop Believin' for the last-ever episode, but it was a song that would have resonated with every member of the Soprano clan — for Tony and Carmella it was the sound of their youth, for Meadow and AJ a new discovery at college or high school.
But when Chase first sought permission from the songwriters, Perry demurred because, he later explained, "I was not excited about the Soprano family being whacked to Don't Stop Believin'". He withheld consent until three days before the episode aired, when Chase agreed to tell him three-year-old spoiler alert!
And so 12 million viewers were left hanging with Journey ringing in their ears. The band wrapped its latest tour, a co-headlining trek with Def Leppard, in , but the chances releasing a new album with Perry, or even reuniting with him, are slim, Cain told Billboard in May Search term.
Billboard Pro Subscribe Sign In. Top Artists. Top Charts. Hot Songs. Billboard Top Videos. Before Cain was a member of Journey, he played for The Babys, and the band was sidelined after Babys singer John Waite injured his leg on stage. I went home and paged through all my spiral notebooks.
When the second B section ended, Neal burst into the melody I had written, playing it as a theme. You too? Steve liked the lyric, so we built off it, adding a boy and a girl headed out on the midnight train.
We loved this idea of two young people dreaming about leaving their town and going somewhere to make a new start. So we began our song with our two characters and put them in motion. How does South Detroit sound? Is there even a South Detroit? I described the small, packed venue, the old bar smell, and the sting of smoke in the eyes.
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