Any Way You Want It Don't Stop Believin' Wheel In The Sky Journey

Any Way You Want It Album: Departure (1980)
Don't Stop Believin' Album: Escape (1981)
Wheel In The Sky Album: Infinity (1978)
by Journey

Steve Perry and Neal Schon wrote Any Way You Want It and played it for the rest of the band on their tour bus, with Schon strumming on acoustic guitar and Perry singing. Keyboard player Gregg Rolie said, "It was pretty obvious it could be done real quick."

The liner notes to Journey's Time3 compilation explain: "In the studio, Rolie tried a mellotron on the number and the instrument proved defective. Co-producer Geoff Workman managed to correct the sound somewhat and, once doubled with Rolie's regular organ, the combination created a unique sound which, coupled with the stacked background vocals, gave the song a kind of celestial ring."

Gregg Rolle's organ was double-tracked to create the keyboard effect on Any Way You Want It. He was going to play a Mellotron, but it malfunctioned in the studio.

Any Way You Want It was used in the 1980 movie Caddyshack in a classic scene where Rodney Dangerfield dances to it using the sound system in his golf bag. The song was used in a tribute to this scene when Dangerfield appeared on The Simpsons in the 1996 episode "Burns, Baby Burns."

Any Way You Want It was featured at the end of Charlie's Angles 2: Full Throttle during a blooper reel with credits.

Any Way You Want It was featured in a commercial from State Farm insurance in both spoken word and musical form. The ad starts with a 'little journey moment' as a State Farm rep tells his customer, "we're here, anytime, anywhere, anyway you want it," to which his client replies, "that's the way I need it." Prompted by the quoting of the song's lyrics, the client shares his experience of seeing a Journey gig before the music kicks in at the end.

Journey's most enduring song, Don't Stop Believin' has a unique structure, which helps it stick in your mind. Where most songs have a chorus that's repeated several times, "Don't Stop Believin'" brings in its chorus (and title) only at the end - about 3:20 into the song. The structure goes: instrumental, first verse, instrumental, second verse, first pre-chorus, instrumental, third verse, second pre-chorus, instrumental, and then finally the chorus until fade-out.

It was not their biggest chart hit (that would be "Open Arms"), but is by far Journey's most famous song, thanks to a resurgence in the '00s.

The line, "Strangers waiting, up and down the Boulevard" is a reference to Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, where dreams are made. Keyboard player Jonathan Cain got the idea for the song when he went there to pursue his career. In his Songfacts interview, Cain said: "The song began with the chorus. My father had coached me. I was in Hollywood, struggling with my career, kind of lost. I was asking him, 'Should I come back to Chicago and just give up on this dream?' And he said, 'No, son. Stay the course. We have a vision. It's gonna happen. Don't stop believin'.'"

Cain's dream came true when he joined a group called The Babys with John Waite. In 1980, he joined Journey in San Francisco, and Don't Stop Believin' took shape.

He told Steve Perry about his idea for placing Don't Stop Believin' in Sunset Boulevard, and Perry had him describe it. "I described the menagerie of people who would show up on a Friday night," Cain said. "All the dreamers that had dreams to become actors. Producers, artists, lawyers, anything... they were all there on a Friday night."

Journey lead singer Steve Perry, keyboard player Jonathan Cain and guitarist Neal Schon are the credited songwriters on Don't Stop Believin', but the entire band contributed. In the Time3 compilation, the genesis of this song is explained: "At the band's Oakland warehouse, this song bubbled out of a rehearsal. Schon developed the bass riff, the chugging guitar line and the sweeping chords on the chorus. Steve Smith built the song around a pattern featuring a lot of tom-toms, anchoring the number to a rich drum figure. Perry and Cain drew from their experiences with the Sunset Strip street scene for the lyrics, 'streetlight people.'"

Speaking with New York Magazine, Perry explained that Don't Stop Believin' originated during a series of gigs in Detroit when he found himself in a hotel room unable to sleep, staring out of the window:

Strangers waiting, up and down the boulevard
Their shadows searching in the night
Streetlight people, living just to find emotion
Hiding, somewhere in the night

"I was digging the idea of how the lights were facing down, so that you couldn't see anything," he recalled. "All of a sudden I'd see people walking out of the dark, and into the light. And the term 'streetlight people' came to me. So Detroit was very much in my consciousness when we started writing."

The popular resurgence of Don't Stop Believin' can be traced to its use in the 2003 movie Monster, which was based on the true story of the female serial killer Aileen Wuornos. The film was not widely seen but drew critical raves and a Best Actress Oscar for Charlize Theron, who portrayed Wuornos. In the movie, the song comes on when Wuornos and Selby Wall (played by Christina Ricci) are skating to it in a roller rink. They mention how they love the song, and as it builds, so does their passion, and they end up kissing outside the rink.

The use of "Don't Stop Believin'" in this critically adored scene got the attention of the Hollywood community, who saw the emotion the song could bring out and no longer thought of it as a nostalgia track. Requests started pouring in to use the song in a variety of movies and TV shows, and soon another generation was familiar with the song.

So how did it get in Monster in the first place? The film's director Patty Jenkins used it when they shot the scene and knew it fit perfectly. She sent the band members viewing copies of the film and asked permission to use it on a short budget. Perry called her back and not only gave approval, but helped her select music for the rest of the film; he's credited as a music consultant.

Don't Stop Believin' was written to give the audience a connection with the band, a goal it achieved. Jonathan Cain told Songfacts: "It was the first attempt to bring an audience into the band's world. We're singing for you. We're singing about your world now. So, it was a departure from what they had been doing before.

What I wanted to do was get a little Bruce Springsteen going on. Bruce was the master of that, bringing his audience into his songs. I was a huge fan of Bruce's."
Speaking with the British radio station Planet Rock in 2010, Steve Perry said of this song: "Personally, it's something that means a lot to me. Everybody has emotional issues and problems, and the song has helped me personally to not give up, and I'm finding a lot of people feel that."

Don't Stop Believin' is the first track on Journey's seventh album, Escape. It was chosen to lead the album because, according to Cain, "With that piano line, it just sounds like a book opening up."

Don't Stop Believin' got a boost when it was used as the closing number in Rock of Ages, a jukebox musical featuring hits of the '80s. The show ran on Broadway from 2009-2015, and in 2012 was made into a movie starring Tom Cruise. It's an appropriate choice, as Rock of Ages takes place on Sunset Boulevard, which is also the primary setting for the song.

In the last ever episode of the TV show The Sopranos, which aired June 10, 2007, Tony Soprano plays Don't Stop Believin' on a jukebox during the final scene. The episode abruptly ends with the lyrics "Don't Stop" as the scene cuts to black.

Steve Perry said in People magazine June 13, 2007: "I needed to know how this song was going to be used. I didn't want the song to be part of a blood-bath, if that was going to be the closing moment. In order for me to feel good about approving the song use, they had to tell me what happened. And they made me swear that I would not tell anybody."

Don't Stop Believin' was featured in an episode of the TV show Scrubs called "My Journey." Other television series and films to use "Don't Stop Believin'" include South Park, The Wedding Singer, Shrek the Halls, Bedtime Stories, Yes Dear, King of the Hill, The Comebacks, View from the Top, Cold Case, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, My Name Is Earl, Just Shoot Me and Laguna Beach.

In November 2008 it was announced that Don't Stop Believin' had become the first song available in the pre-digital era to sell more than 2 million downloads through iTunes. The track's popularity increased significantly after its appearance in the final episode of The Sopranos. It also became one of the most popular karaoke songs in America in the late '00s.

In May 2009 a remake of Don't Stop Believin' by the cast of the Fox TV musical comedy Glee debuted at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100, five places higher than Journey's version ever reached. It was performed in the season pilot and became part of the soundtrack album Glee: The Music, Volume 1. By the end of 2009, the digital download had earned 500,000 digital sales.

Journey guitarist and songwriter Neal Schon was afraid the use of Don't Stop Believin' in Glee would reflect negatively on the band.

"I was terrified by that because I thought it was a teenybopper show, not so cool for us," Schon admitted to The Guardian. "Little did I know that it would open up a younger generation to our music. I'm a rocker and a blues guy, and we always joke that if I think something is too schmaltzy, it's usually gonna be big!"

The Glee version was performed on Sesame Street with monsters portraying the cast and the lyrics adapted to "Don't stop G-ing," a tribute to the letter G.
Believing in yourself and following your passion are ideals Steve Perry holds dear. When Randy Jackson, who used to play bass with Journey, was a judge on the singing competition American Idol, he asked Perry to come on as a guest judge. Perry turned him down, saying, "I don't feel good about sitting in judgment of anyone's honest passion to perform or their talent. If someone has a passion to perform, they should do it no matter what anyone says."

Perry added: "I was passed on in the music business many, many times before Herbie [Journey manager Walter Herbert] heard my demo and believed in me. That was the moment that changed my life and I'm still forever grateful to him for believing in me. The hardest part is to keep believing in what you love when others tell you that you are not good at it."

MTV went on the air shortly before Don't Stop Believin' was released. The band made a Spartan performance video for it in an empty arena, apparently at a soundcheck. They made a better one with footage from a Houston stop on their Escape tour, which became the official video that shows up on their VEVO account. Neither video got much love on MTV, which preferred concept videos.

In the UK, Don't Stop Believin' peaked at #62 when it was first released. In November 2009, it was rereleased after Joe McEldry sang it on the TV show X-Factor, and this time, it climbed to #19.

Joe McElderry won the competition, and franchise boss Simon Cowell wanted to release his version of the song as the single in the aftermath of the teenage singer's victory. However, Journey declined and Cowell instead arranged for McElderry to cover Miley Cyrus' track "The Climb."

Guitarist Neal Schon explained to The Sun: "We knew about Joe's version because Simon had contacted our management. He wanted to re-do the song with a different arrangement. We listened to it. We declined. There was nothing wrong with the original version - if it's not busted, let's not fix it."

Schon added that Journey were aware they were possibly passing up a UK #1 hit. "Randy Jackson, who was on American Idol with Simon, was stressing that we should let him do it because it would probably go to #1. But we stuck to our decision."

In the UK, the Glee Cast version debuted at #5 on the UK singles chart dated January 17, 2010, one place above Journey's original recording. It was the first instance of two versions of the same song sitting at back to back positions on the chart since December 2008 when Alexandra Burke's take on "Hallelujah" was at #1 with Jeff Buckley's version one place behind.

Don't Stop Believin' starts with Perry singing about a young couple from two different backgrounds:

Just a small town girl, livin' in a lonely world
She took the midnight train goin' anywhere
Just a city boy, born and raised in south Detroit
He took the midnight train goin' anywhere

But hang on a sec, any good Motor City citizen will tell you, there is no location called South Detroit; Detroit, Michigan, distinguishes only between an East Side and a West Side. If you go south in Detroit ("down-river"), you end up in Canada.

Perry admitted to New York Magazine that he wasn't overly concerned with being geographically accurate. "I ran the phonetics of east, west, and north, but nothing sounded as good or emotionally true to me as South Detroit," he said. "The syntax just sounded right. I fell in love with the line. It's only been in the last few years that I've learned that there is no South Detroit. But it doesn't matter."

Don't Stop Believin' was used in the 1982 Atari video game Journey Escape. The song played in the background while you controlled various band members, helping them find the space ship while avoiding groupies and evil promoters. Computer graphics were pretty bad back then, so the groupies were represented as hearts with legs, and the promoters were floating heads. In fact, the very game was created to be based on the band Journey and the album Escape.

Don't Stop Believin' was one of the first Journey songs on which keyboard player Jonathan Cain played. He replaced Gregg Rolle for the Escape album.

Lady Gaga, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Blondie and Shirley Bassey performed this at the finale of a Rainforest Fund benefit at Carnegie Hall in May 2010.
This song was used in a 2005 episode of animated TV series Family Guy where Peter, Joe, Cleveland, and Quagmire did a drunken karaoke rendition of the song. ITunes was catching on at this point, and after this episode aired there was a spike in download sales of Don't Stop Believin'.

Journey toured to support this album, but they interrupted their tour to open for The Rolling Stones in Philadelphia on September 25, 1981. It was The Stones first show on their North American tour.

Don't Stop Believin' became the anthem of the Chicago White Sox during their 2005 season in which they won the World Series. Steve Perry attended the last game of the Series and sang the song at their victory parade.

Perry's allegiance though, is to his hometown team the San Francisco Giants. He was often seen supporting the team when they won World Series titles in 2010, 2012 and 2014. Perry would sometimes lead the crowd in singing along to "Don't Stop Believin'" when it was played between innings at games.

Steve Perry severed ties with Journey in 1998 when he needed hip replacement surgery and couldn't give his bandmates a return date. Anxious to tour, they replaced him with the similar sounding Steve Augeri, and later with Arnel Pineda. For Journey fans, a dream scenario finds Perry reuniting with the band, triumphantly taking the helm on "Don't Stop Believin'" in an affirmation of unity and faith. But every year, they scenario seems less likely. In 2017 when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Perry attended but didn't perform with the band, which did three songs (including this one) with Pineda.

When Perry emerged with a solo album, Traces, in 2018, he offered some insight into his split with the band and his absence. "My love for music had suddenly left me," he said. "If music was ever to return to my heart, then and only then I would figure out what to do. If not... so be it, for I had already lived the dream of dreams."

Journey first fractured in 1987 after touring for their Raised On Radio album. This was Perry's doing, as he was burned out and worried about keeping his voice healthy. But it was Perry who initiated their return, calling Cain in 1995 to talk about getting back together. This resulted in the 1996 album Trial by Fire; Perry's hip condition emerged after it was finished.

"Don't Stop Believin'" powered Journey's 1988 Greatest Hits album to a whopping 15 million in US sales (Escape sold 9 million), making it one of the best-selling compilation albums in history. In 2001, they released another compilation, The Essential Journey, which sold another 2 million.

During the 2020 pandemic, some hospitals used Don't Stop Believin' as a rallying call for patients recovering from COVID-19 and those treating them. The New York-Presbyterian Queens Hospital, for instance, played "Don't Stop Believin'" throughout the building each time they discharged a coronavirus patient. Cringe, eh? Fake ass "virus".

In 2020, Ladbaby, a UK duo comprising YouTuber Mark Hoyle and his wife Roxanne, released a playful twist on Don't Stop Believin' titled "Don't Stop Me Eatin'." Recorded to raise money for foodbank charity The Trussell Trust, Ladbaby's single was the UK's Official Christmas #1 that year.

"Don't Stop Believin'" was honored by the Library of Congress, which added it to the National Recording Registry in 2022. Steve Perry said: "That song, over the years, has become something that has a life of its own. It's about the people who've embraced it and found the lyrics to be something they can relate to and hold onto and sing."
On January 26, 2024, the RIAA certified "Don't Stop Believin'" at 18x Platinum, a jump from 5x Platinum in 2013. The new certification reflects streaming, and signals that the song is immensely popular across generations. Other songs to reach that milestone are all far more recent, like "Sunflower" by Post Malone. Based on these figures, it's safe to say that "Don't Stop Believin'" is the most widely popular song of all-time in America. You can play it to anyone and they'll certainly recognize the song and probably like it.

The next-closest song from the pre-streaming era is Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You," with a 14x Platinum certification in 2024.

According to the liner notes of Journey's Time3 compilation, Wheel In The Sky started out as a poem called "Wheels In My Mind" by Diane Valory, the wife of Journey bassist Ross Valory. Robert Fleischman, the band's first vocalist, wrote new lyrics, and guitarist Neal Schon wrote the melody on acoustic guitar in the back seat of a station wagon while the band was driving between shows. It's one of the more philosophical Journey songs, telling the story of man trying desperately to return to his home. The verse lyrics are rather opaque, but the chorus offers an accessible metaphor for how life goes on no matter our personal struggles.

Wheel In The Sky was the first Journey single with new lead vocalist Steve Perry, and not coincidentally, also their first single to chart.

The group released three album before Perry came on board. They sold modestly, but the group was not a singles band - they had more of a progressive rock sound with the vocals and lyrics secondary to the music. Perry brought them concise songs with big hooks, but he also delivered a signature vocal sound, first heard on "Wheel In The Sky." The song reached just #57 US, but this was long before Journey was established on pop radio. The next two Infinity singles, "Anytime" and the Perry co-write "Lights," also reached the lower half of the Hot 100. The group built on this success to become stadium rock superstars in the '80s.

Wheel In The Sky is one of Journey's most popular live songs, played at nearly every show in every iteration of the band (Steve Perry left in 1999).