Journey’s eternal hit “Don’t Stop Believin’” feels like it’s a song with nine lives. Although it was a solid hit when it came out on the 1981 album Escape, it has since been revived through placements in TV series, covers by other artists, and performances on singing competition shows. Upon its original release, the piano-driven song became one of their biggest hits and stayed so during their mainstream peak of the late ‘70s through the mid-1980s. It has since became the hit for the iconic group, selling 18 million units—13 million of those certified between 2013 and 2024.
A Song About a Feeling
Co-written by Journey frontman Steve Perry, guitarist Neal Schon, and keyboardist Jonathan Cain, “Don’t Stop Believin’” is an inspiring, hopeful song that actually isn’t really about a whole lot. It’s a vague, impressionistic piece about people out on a weekend, perhaps looking for love, companionship, or a deeper meaning in life, or perhaps all of it. The single has resonated with people because of the vibes the song gives off, and those vibes have proven irresistible to people in television.
Just a small town girl
Livin’ in a lonely world
She took the midnight train going anywhere
Just a city boy
Born and raised in South Detroit
He took the midnight train going anywhere
A singer in a smokey room
A smell of wine and cheap perfume
For a smile they can share the night
It goes on and on and on and on
Strangers waitin’
Up and down the boulevard
Their shadows searchin’ in the night
Streetlights, people
Livin’ just to find emotion
Hidin’ somewhere in the night
A little more than a feeling, the song has eclipsed other Journey hits, racking up over 2 billion Spotify listens. The live version has surpassed 310 million YouTube views.
Millennium Resurrection
During the 2000s, the song kept coming back. It was used in the roller-rink scene in the Charlize Theron movie Monster in 2003, then in two-year increments it got a television boost from the series Scrubs, Family Guy, The Sopranos, and lastly, Glee. It no doubt helps that a lot of music supervisors who work in Hollywood are Gen Xers who grew up with the song, but there are other Tinseltown types who adore it too.
In the Season 3 episode of Scrubs entitled “My Journey” originally broadcast in 2003, J.D. (Zach Braff) sings a bit of the song a cappella when trying to get a co-worker to hire a Journey cover band for her wedding. Then the actual song is played over the closing montage during which various story threads are resolved and wrapped around each other, tying in with the lyrical theme. The week after the episode aired, Journey’s Greatest Hits jumped 51% in sales, according to The New York Times.
Two years later, in a Family Guy episode, Peter Griffin and his friends mangle the song during karaoke. However, the bar locals love them, and they become inspired to form their own rock group. The song’s downloads jumped 150% the next week. During that same year, the hit also emerged in episodes of Nighty Night and King of the Hill, as well as the season premiere of MTV’s Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County, the latter pushing it into the iTunes Top 10.
A Big Hit that Prefaced a Big Hit
In 2007, the biggest boost for “Don’t Stop Believin’” came from the song’s use in the final sequence of The Sopranos series finale, in which Tony Soprano and his family are gathered for dinner at an Italian restaurant. But the presence of what looked like a hit man lurking off to the side hinted this happy familial moment may be fatally disrupted. The last shot cut to black with the sound of a gunshot going off, and it became a very controversial and talked-about moment.
The song’s gains off placement on The Sopranos were big. Its iTunes downloads went from 1,000 on the day before the episode to 6,531 the day after, helping it rise to No. 17, while the Greatest Hits album broke into that platform’s Top 20.
In 2009, the high school singers of Glee performed their animated, harmony-rich version in the climactic scene of the debut episode. That same year, “Don’t Stop Believin’” was part of the repertoire for the hit Broadway musical Rock of Ages, which was turned into a Tom Cruise movie in 2012. The Glee effect was more potent because the show covered the song a whopping total of seven times, as well as on Glee national tours in 2010 and 2011. The hit’s usage in UK shows like X-Factor and Big Brother 2010 boosted sales in that country, now topping 3.5 million. In 2018, American Idol finalist Gabby Barrett performed the song on the show, and Steve Perry surprised her by showing up and complimenting her.
Continually Revived
While Journey songs received a good amount of usage in film and TV throughout the early to mid-2000s (notably on three episodes of Cold Case), that usage increased substantially post-Sopranos. Since 2008, “Don’t Stop Believin’” has been heard in at least five movies and 22 television episodes. Other Journey tunes have also proliferated on the big and small screens.
It’s likely this trend came down to one fateful decision.
Steve Perry told the BBC in 2018 he wouldn’t approve “Don’t Stop Believin’” for The Sopranos until he knew how it would be used. He didn’t want it to be played over a violent, Scorsese-like scene. He held out until three days before the show aired, and they agreed to tell him the ending under the condition he did not reveal it.
“You can see that they wrote the whole end sequence to the song,” Perry told the BBC. “When I sing, Just a city boy, the son comes in; and on the line, Street lights, people, the daughter’s trying to park underneath a street light. So they’re really correlating the visuals to the moments of the song. If I hadn’t given approval they’d have been screwed!”
And Journey’s mega-hit might not have ascended such new heights or reached new and younger listeners. Somehow, though, it seems like “Don’t Stop Believin’” has been destined to go on and on and on …
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Photo by Paul Natkin/Getty Images
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