Don't Stop Believin' — Journey (1981)

Why it's in this book

This is November's anchor song, the second big stop of the year after La Bamba and Twist and Shout. With it you change family: you leave the I–IV–V of rock and roll behind and move into the I–V–vi–IV loop, the same one as With or Without You and Chasing Cars, and the one you already sang in 1º ESO with Perfect. In class we play it with four chords, E–B–C♯m–A, or in D (D–A–Bm–G) if that suits the ukulele better; the record also slips in a G sharp minor in the second half of each loop, and we leave that chord out at first. In the room with nothing you work on "don't stop believin'" in two parts and keep the beat with your body. In the ukulele room you put the whole form together, which is the hard part here. And in the music room comes what the song is really for: the keyboard player gets the piano riff, and the guitarist gets a first real solo.

Why this song

You have heard this song in a stadium, in a TV series or in a karaoke clip, shouted by people who don't know the rest of the words. They nearly always sing the same thing: the title.

The strange thing is where that title sits. On the record, "don't stop believin'" with its chorus melody only turns up with about fifty seconds left. For more than three minutes the song makes you wait.

The question on this page is: how does a song hold together without its chorus? The answer is in the piano at the start.

Historical context

Journey were a band from San Francisco. They began in the seventies playing mostly instrumental rock, with a guitarist, Neal Schon, who had played with Santana as a teenager. Once Steve Perry became their singer, they moved to shorter songs, built for radio and for huge arenas. That sound became known as arena rock.

In 1980 the keyboard player Jonathan Cain joined. He brought a line with him. Years earlier, when he was scraping by as a musician on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, he phoned his father to say he was giving up. His father told him not to stop believing, or he was done. That line is the title.

Cain, Perry and Schon wrote it, and they recorded it in 1981 in Berkeley, California, for the album Escape. The band played it in a single take. Perry recorded the vocal, almost all of it in one go too, the following week.

Foto: PumpkinSky, CC BY-SA 3.0, vía Wikimedia Commons

This is Jonathan Cain at the piano, at a 2014 concert in Virginia Beach, in the United States. The picture was taken off the giant screen above the stage. Notice that he sits at a piano with more keyboards behind him: on the record he also used a synthesizer.

In 1981 the song reached number 9 in the United States. It was not their biggest hit at the time. Its second life came twenty-five years later: the final scene of The Sopranos in 2007, the Glee cover in 2009, and baseball and hockey stadiums. By 2012 it was the best-selling digital song from the whole of the twentieth century.

Musical characteristics

A piano riff that never leaves. The song opens with the piano alone. The right hand plays repeated chords while the left hand walks up and down underneath. That figure repeats for almost the entire song: it is a riff, a short phrase that keeps coming back until it becomes the song's signature. If someone plays the first two seconds, you already know what song it is.

The usual loop, with a twist. The chords of the riff are E, B, C sharp minor and A: I–V–vi–IV. It is the same chord progression you have been singing since 1º ESO. But the record has a twist. In the second half of the loop, instead of going back to C sharp minor, it passes through G sharp minor (chord iii). It is a softer minor chord, and it stops the loop from sounding exactly the same twice in a row. In class we drop it at first and bring it in once the loop runs by itself.

A band that builds up. First only piano and voice. Then the bass and guitar come in. The bass plays quavers, two notes per beat, nonstop: it is the engine. On top, the guitar plays arpeggios in semiquavers, four notes per beat. The drummer, Steve Smith, asked Schon to play like that, like a train pulling the song forward. The drums hold it all together with the backbeat: the loud snare hit on beats 2 and 4.

The chorus, at the end. This song's form is upside down. There are three verses and two pre-choruses, sections that sound like "here it comes, here it comes", and the chorus only appears at the end. Before anyone sings it, it is played once in full with Schon's guitar on top: that is the solo. That is why the solo is so easy to remember. It is the melody you have been waiting three minutes for, played on guitar before anyone sings it.

Hard facts: E major, 4/4, 119 beats per minute, 4:11. The form: piano intro, verse, instrumental, half verse, pre-chorus, instrumental, verse, pre-chorus, instrumental chorus with the guitar, and the sung chorus until the fade-out.

Guided listening

Play the studio audio. In the intro, listen to the piano only. Try to separate the two hands: the right one repeats, the left one moves. Count how many chords there are before the loop starts again.

When Perry's voice comes in, keep listening to the piano. Nothing has changed: the riff is still underneath.

After the first verse the bass and guitar come in. Tap the bass quavers with your hand, two per beat. Then try to hear the fast guitar arpeggios, which go twice as fast.

In the pre-choruses, notice how the music seems to hang in the air without quite arriving. Count how many times that happens before the chorus.

At the end, when the guitar plays a long melody on its own, sing it in your head. A few seconds later Perry sings it with the title. It is the same tune.

Trivia and curiosities

• The bass line, played by Ross Valory on the record, was invented by the guitarist, Neal Schon. In a band, a part does not have to come from the person who plays it.

• The lyrics mention "South Detroit", a neighbourhood that does not exist: south of downtown Detroit there is a river, and across it, Canada. Cain called it "the city of possibilities in your mind".

• Steve Perry was hesitant at first about letting the song close The Sopranos. In the end he agreed, and downloads shot up.

• In 2022 the US Library of Congress added it to its National Recording Registry, the list of recordings worth preserving.

Classroom activities

• Play the loop. Ukulele, guitar and keyboard: E–B–C♯m–A, one chord per bar, or D–A–Bm–G if you are in D. Start with one strum per beat. Once it runs without stopping, anyone who wants to adds G sharp minor (or F sharp minor in D) in the second loop.

• The riff, two hands. The keyboard player first plays only the right-hand chords, in quavers. Then only the left hand. Both together, once each one works without looking.

• Build the form. On the board, write the form in words: intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus. Then, with the recording, point to where you are. Closed question: how many times do you hear the pre-chorus before the chorus?

• The solo. The guitarist learns the chorus melody note by note: that is the basis of the solo. Meanwhile, everyone else sings "don't stop believin'" in two parts over the loop.

• Create. In groups, write a short song with the chorus at the end. What do the verses need so that people stick around until it arrives?

Key vocabulary

• Riff — riff: frase corta que se repite y se convierte en la firma de la canción
• Chord progression — progresión de acordes
• Quavers — corcheas: dos notas por pulso
• Backbeat — el golpe de caja en el 2 y el 4
• Pre-chorus — preestribillo: la parte que prepara el estribillo

Resources

Official live video (Houston, 1981) — There is no studio music video. This is the video the band itself puts out, from the Escape tour: the five musicians from the record playing it.

Official studio audio — The album recording, the one we use for the guided listening.

Piano tutorial — Pianote. Starts with the right-hand chords, then explains the left hand, which is the one that moves.

Guitar tutorial — Marty Music. The chords, the arpeggios and the electric guitar parts.

Guitar solo tutorial — GuitarLessons365Song. Just the solo, slowly and phrase by phrase.

Ukulele tutorial — Four Chord Simple. An easy version, with the four chords of the loop.

Bass tutorial — Nate Navarro. Plays the whole line with the tab on screen, to play along with.

Drum tutorial — Drumeo. Steve Smith, the drummer on the record, explains how he built his part.

• Harmonic analysis — https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/view/journey/dont-stop-believin