In the closing moments of Glee, the newest US smash to creep on to our TV screens, an ensemble of high school singers and musicians deliver an immaculately turned version of a song that has been resonating through American hearts for almost thirty years.

Largely unknown in the UK – Simon Cowell said as much as The X-Factor winner, Joe McElderry, performed the piece in last weekend’s final – the song has struck a chord in its homeland that marks it almost as the ‘God Bless America’ or the ‘This Land is Your Land’ of the MTV generation.

It isn’t an anthem in the traditional sense, but ‘Don’t Stop Believin” – a Top 40 hit for the San Francisco band Journey in 1982 – has certainly emerged as an anthem of the contemporary kind, a song that has ornamented a remarkable string of television shows in recent decades, securing it a reputation that transcends the ephemeral nature of the hit parade.

The song came to my attention again in 2007 after it was utilised as the musical coda to six seasons of the most gripping drama as The Sopranos closed with Journey’s vigorous slice of vinyl optimism blasting out of the burger bar juke box with Mafia boss Tony Soprano, surrounded by his family, looking forward to a more secure future after a terrible round of blood-letting.

It may have been a curious use of an upbeat tale of teen loneliness transformed by love, yet this was not a simple sign-off with the director proposing all was well in Heaven. No, this was the head of an Italian crime syndicate putting in his own quarters into the Wurlitzer and reassuring himself that, amid the carnage, popular music could somehow restore his domestic – and psychological – equilibrium.

The key though, in this three minute cameo combining romantic rags, the lure of the road and erotic riches, is the chorus. In an age when belief systems are less certain than ever, the abstract notion of simply believing is enough to instil a feeling of hope in the tens of millions of American listeners who’ve been affected and inspired by the song.

And they’ve certainly had plenty of chances to encounter it as the piece has made numerous supporting appearances in everything from Scrubs to King of the Hill, My Name is Earl to South Park, Just Shoot Me to Family Guy, not to mention in the biggest small screen hit of them all, American Idol.

It is not without a certain irony that Randy Jackson, one of the permanent judges on American Idol, was bass player with Journey but, it must be added, some few years after ‘Don’t Stop Believin” had enjoyed its stay in the Billboard chart.

For writers Neal Schon – once of Santana – and fellow group members Jonathan Cain and Steve Perry, the song must have generated remarkable royalty earnings since its release, yet Perry was said to be hesitant about the song’s use in The Sopranos. Its ubiquity as a signifier of positive possibility perhaps ran counter with the darker themes of the gangster underworld.

However, the fact that it has since appeared in the 2009 video game Rock Band suggests a further generation, at least, are going to hooked by this enduring composition. While the group themselves are caught in that strange and anachronistic netherworld of soft rock – a time when Foreigner and Boston ruled the airwaves – their signature song has cast off the veils of nostalgia to remain, unquestionably, a contemporary winner.

Taken from this post:
Journey’s trend: Why this band don’t stop believin’