Brian Damage
07-20-2009, 10:52 PM
With its re-emergence in a version by the cast of the TV series Glee, the Journey song Don't Stop Believing is gaining a reputation as the song that won't go away.
It's famous appearance in the final episode of The Sopranos is just one of a series of uses of the song on TV and in film that has reintroduced it to successive generations of listeners.
The 1981 rock power ballad is the top-selling digital download of a track not originally released in this century, according to Nielsen SoundScan, selling 2.8 million units since 2003.
It is sung by Steve Perry, lead singer of Journey from 1978-1987 and 1995-1998, and one of Rolling Stone magazine's 100 top rock singers of all time.
Perry, now working on a solo album in Los Angeles, said he always thought Don't Stop Believing had potential as a single. It was always a hit with live audiences, though it didn't get great radio play at the time it was issued, he said.
"When we were doing the song in 1981, I knew something was happening, but honestly, when I saw it in the film Monster with Patty Jenkins, I started think, 'Oh my goodness there's really something,'" he said in an interview with CBC's Q cultural affairs show aired Monday.
The scene in 2003's Monster with Charlize Therone was just the beginning. The song also turned up in TV series Orange County, Family Guy (with the cast singing), Scrubs and Laguna Beach, and the films The Comebacks and Bedtime Stories.
Don't Stop Believing is also a popular group song on the current American Idols tour that comes to Hamilton, Ont., next month, and just played Vancouver. It's also banged out during Detroit Red Wings NHL games.
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/music/story/2009/07/20/steve-perry.html?ref=rss
It's famous appearance in the final episode of The Sopranos is just one of a series of uses of the song on TV and in film that has reintroduced it to successive generations of listeners.
The 1981 rock power ballad is the top-selling digital download of a track not originally released in this century, according to Nielsen SoundScan, selling 2.8 million units since 2003.
It is sung by Steve Perry, lead singer of Journey from 1978-1987 and 1995-1998, and one of Rolling Stone magazine's 100 top rock singers of all time.
Perry, now working on a solo album in Los Angeles, said he always thought Don't Stop Believing had potential as a single. It was always a hit with live audiences, though it didn't get great radio play at the time it was issued, he said.
"When we were doing the song in 1981, I knew something was happening, but honestly, when I saw it in the film Monster with Patty Jenkins, I started think, 'Oh my goodness there's really something,'" he said in an interview with CBC's Q cultural affairs show aired Monday.
The scene in 2003's Monster with Charlize Therone was just the beginning. The song also turned up in TV series Orange County, Family Guy (with the cast singing), Scrubs and Laguna Beach, and the films The Comebacks and Bedtime Stories.
Don't Stop Believing is also a popular group song on the current American Idols tour that comes to Hamilton, Ont., next month, and just played Vancouver. It's also banged out during Detroit Red Wings NHL games.
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/music/story/2009/07/20/steve-perry.html?ref=rss