40 years ago today, Journey Released “Escape”

40 years ago today, Saturday July 17th, 1981, Journey‘s Escape was released. The set, which was the band’s seventh album, topped the Billboard 200 albums chart for one week starting on September 12th, 1981, and to date has sold over nine million copies in the U.S. alone.

Escape, which was the band’s first set with keyboardist/songwriter Jonathan Cain, who replaced both Santana and Journey co-founder Gregg Rolie, featured five hit singles, including: “Open Arms” which topped out at Number Two, “Who’s Cryin’ Now” which hit Number Four, “Don’t Stop Believin'” which hit Number Nine, “Still They Ride” which peaked at Number 19, and “Stone In Love” which hit Number 13 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart.

The popularity of “Don’t Stop Believin'” shows absolutely no signs of fading with the band’s signature tune now passing streams of 1 billion on Spotify. Back in 2009, the track made history by becoming the first catalog digital track to reach 2 million downloads. Today, the song boasts over seven million digital downloads. The song is forever burned into popular culture for its legendary use in the 2007 series finale of HBO’s The Sopranos.

Last year, during the height of the Covid pandemic, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'” was blasted daily at Detroit’s Henry Ford Hospital and in the “Big Apple” at New York-Presbyterian Queens Hospital as patients slowly recover