If asked what the most overplayed, stereotypical white dad song is, a lot of people would probably answer with Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’ off of their 1981 album Escape. I’ve met a lot of people who are annoyed by it. I’ve met a lot of people who think it’s bad, or at the very least doesn’t deserve the hype.
I’m not here to say it’s the best song ever. I’m not even here to say it’s the best Journey song ever. It might not even be the best song on Escape (As a geology major, I am partial to Stone in Love, but Escape is loaded with some of Journey’s best). However, Don’t Stop Believin’ still has merit, and I don’t think it should be written off so easily.
When it comes to music theory, I know very little, so I can’t effectively argue for the artistry of the music itself. I will say that it has a beautiful build and an epic guitar solo that perfectly complements the narrative the lyrics weave, and what a narrative it is.
We start with two people, lost, alone, looking for something, taking the midnight train. The city boy is from a place that doesn’t exist in real life. It could be you. It’s probably me. The piano is the only accompaniment.
Small acts of kindness lead people towards temporary companionship. Generally, people wander without purpose, living in Plato’s Cave, searching for the exit and what has to be real life but unable to find it.
Guitar, bass, synth. Drums. Something coming together.
Streetlights feel more like spotlights as people perform as caricatures of themselves, hollow but not yet defeated.
People find some measure of comfort in the adrenaline rush of risk, but it’s a fleeing thing that doesn’t turn out well for everybody. There is no ending, because this isn’t a story, even though it feels like it, sometimes.
People are still searching.
There’s the epic guitar solo, and at the very pinnacle:
Don’t stop believing.
In a song that is four minutes and nine seconds long, Steve Perry first declares the title three minutes and twenty-two seconds in.
It is hope! It is not quite joy, but the knowledge that you will find it one day! That things can be better! That one moment of happiness is not temporary, but the beginning of something! People are still under the streetlights, or perhaps they are the streetlights, light that cuts through the shadows, searching. Look no further! It has arrived, or will soon! Rejoice!
Classic 80’s fade out. Not a hard ending, but instead something that only stops because they had limited space on the disc. The movie never ends.
This is the story of Don’t Stop Believin’. It is a tragedy, and it is also a reminder. Don’t stop believing. Things will get better. It won’t be like this forever. An epic of hope, poignant, conveyed via a power ballad. It is not a bad song. I would even say that it is a good song. People have just heard it so often that they have forgotten to listen to it, and I think that is a shame.
Maybe I’m just a college student struggling to find purpose in a world that doesn’t have a space quite large enough for me to put everything I am into, or maybe this song was for people like me. Maybe this song is for you, too. If it is, or if it isn’t, chances are there are plenty of other things that you should be listening to, and haven’t. Give some of those a try, too. Or just listen to Livin’ on a Prayer.
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Howdy, I’m Oiseau! You pronounce Oiseau like wah-zoh! Oiseau means bird in French, and Nighthawks is a painting and also my radio show. In an ideal world, we have fun and chill times. In the real world, we have fun and chill times, but we also occasionally go a little insane from life’s inevitable longing and melancholy. If this is a surprise, you should go to the Art Institute of Chicago and stand in front of Nighthawks for a little while; perhaps then you’ll understand. Also I talk about birds, because my greatest goal in life is to be a bird. Music happens also.