Watch out Streetlight People. The tale I tell below is a sad and frightening one filled with many links to Ryan Seacrest (the spiritual son of Dick Clark, my long time personal choice as the Anti-Christ) and American Idol. I bring it up only because our very survival as a species depends on it.
Journey was without a doubt the most popular band in my high school – I graduated in 1984. I hated them then and well, I pretty much still hate them now. I was the guy who would deal with his depression by making the jukebox play The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go” 16 times in a row to personally infest everyone within hearing range with my disgust for my current station in life. I pretty much still am, but now it costs a lot more than $4.00 to pull off.
As a fairly conscious watcher of pop culture, I have to ask the following, “Did I miss the ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ meeting”? Was there a big gathering at the docks one night where it was resolved that this Journey staple would suddenly become more prevalent and certainly more beloved than the National Anthem? Could there be a wannabe Hitler out there somewhere in the heartland drilling it into his young, gullible acolytes' heads that “Don’t Stop Believing” is the song that will catapult us forward through this new millennium?
Is Randy Jackson (the American Idol, one not Michael’s brother) now so powerful that having somehow convinced the nation that he was once in Journey, he is now trying to convince us that Journey was and is now bigger than the Beatles? (By the way, I refuse to believe that Randy was ever really in Journey. Every time they show a photo or video from that era it looks like the obviously fake ones they showed on Saturday Night Live to prove that Eddie Murphy had once been unceremoniously kicked out of the Fab Four.)
David Chase used the song to weirdly and unsatisfactorily end his magisterial and infinitely respected HBO series The Sopranos. This I believe to have been the first seed in the Anti-Christ’s plan to have this song take over the world. How else but through the work of Satan could one possibly believe that the ending to that many years of intense buildup would be Tony eats onion rings with his family at a local diner?
Article comments
1 - Matthew T. Sussman
"Was there a big gathering at the docks one night where it was resolved that this Journey staple would suddenly become more prevalent and certainly more beloved than the National Anthem?"
Yes, it was held annually at Detroit's Joe Louis Arena for every Red Wings Stanley Cup.
Even though "South Detroit" is Windsor.
2 - JC Mosquito
Take Journey's Don't Stop Believin', add it to Cher's Believe and the Monkees' I'm a Believer, and it all becomes clear - believe it or not.
3 - Puff Saddy
Don't Stop Believin' is a great song. I think you are miffed that a song you hated so much as a teenager, has suddenly captured the imaginations of so many people years later. Yes, it is ironic, however, the song is amazing.
4 - Jennifer
You are funny! I liked the song because like Matthew above I'm from Detroit. But I feel the same way about The Eagles that you do about Journey, so I understand your hatred. I never saw what everyone else did in them and I thought all their songs sucked and were totally depressing.
5 - Brad Laidman
Check out Mojo Nixon's Don Henley Must Die!
6 - journey1
are you gay. that song is awesome
7 - sosaiththeprophet
Thank god somebody else realizes how bad this band and song are. I don't know why its' suddenly okay to say that Journey was good. It's like a Republican senator admitting to pederasty and the public goes "you know, maybe it's not that bad..."
8 - Ben
It was that family guy episode a while ago when everyone stops what they're doing to say "Is that Journey?", even people carrying a casket into a church, then run off-screen. It caught on and turned into a meme.