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January 09, 2008

Awesomely Bad Pop Music - Journey "Don't Stop Believing"

Some bands are earnest, others bad. Many are both. Is it Journey's near-mythic badness + ironic popularity that compelled David Chase decided to use "Don't Stop", as the capstone to The Sopranos? What is it about
"Open Arms" that demands to be sung at every Karaoke?

In the third grade when I used my allowance to buy a box of Atari 2600 video games, included was Journey Escape, and terrible game that featured the opening piano riff of "Don't Stop Believing" repeating endlessly. The Scarab Smashing Through the Crystal Ball cover made it's return in the 9th grade, when we spent the first semester of Bible Class watching Hells Bells & Violence in Rock Music by David Benoit. I wouldn't even call them a guilty pleasure anymore.

Music | By Josiah Roe | 06:28 PM

Comments

Because I graduated high school in 1986, there were the inevitable debates: who was better, Styx or Journey? And if Journey, was Escape or Frontiers the best album?

(The answer, in case you don't know, is Escape.)

U2 and REM were new, and only for Euro-trash, or what today would be known as "metrosexuals." We used much less kind words back then. Frankie went to Hollywood, and Wham! wore earrings in their right ears. What were redneck teens in Virginia expected to say?

Of course, the very next year, in college, just about everything changed.

Posted by: joe lance at January 9, 2008 08:18 PM

I spent a solid year's worth of time in my youth devouring the Journey catalog. (I still dig "Just the Same Way" off of "Evolution" and some of their deep catalog stuff. Sue me.)

But towards the end of my Journey phase came my first set of really good drums and the Steely Dan catalog.

...and for the next six years I tried to become Steve Gadd and Bernard Purdie. I still place "The Royal Scam" in my top ten favorite albums of all time, and have listened to at least one Steely Dan album -- through all my subsequent musical phases -- every week since 1987. And will likely continue to do so.

Posted by: bill at January 9, 2008 09:43 PM