Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believin” Passes One Billion Streams On Spotify

The popularity of Journey's 1981 “Don't Stop Believin'” shows absolutely no signs of fading with the band's signature tune now passing streams of 1 billion on Spotify, according to Loudersound.com. 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.

Neal Schon, Journey's co-founding guitarist and co-writer of the track posted on social media, “Wow!!! Thank you Fans!! We are over 1 Billion Streams on Spotify 'Don't Stop Believin'' QUEEN is the ONLY other band at this point. Congratulations guys . . JOURNEY and QUEEN the only 2 bands ever to attain more then (sic) 1 billion Streams individually for 'Don't Stop Believin' and 'Bohemian Rhapsody' Cheers Friends.”

The ongoing massive success of “Don't Stop Believin'” doesn't surprise co-writer and former-Journey frontman, Steve Perry, who told us he was aware of the sing's potential by the reaction it received in the concert halls: “It's a funny thing, because though those other songs were hits — bonafide radio hits — whenever we played 'Don't Stop Believin'; if you see the Journey DVD live, it's 1981 Houston, it's called. If you see that DVD that was filmed in Houston back then, that song gets a response like it's getting now to the live audience. So my, point is, during the live shows that song always got a great response — it just wasn't a radio hit.”

Keyboardist and co-writer Jonathan Cain recalled to us where the original inspiration for 'Don't Stop Believin'' came from: “I needed money. 'Called my father. 'Help me out. Should I come home to Chicago?' He says, 'No, stay in Hollywood — something good's gonna happen. Don't Stop Believin,' Jon.' So, y'know, I had. . . I write stuff down and I wrote down 'Don't Stop Believin'' somewhere in my spiral notebooks of many lyrics. And then when they asked me to come up and write the Escape album, we were looking for another song. And so Steve (Perry) said, 'Go see what you've got. You must have something laying around, y'know?' So I saw the lyric and then I said, 'Well, we need another song — I think Steve is gonna like this idea.'”

Neal Schon broke down for us how the legendary track originally took shape: “Y'know, Jonathan (Cain) brought in the chorus, which is the piano riff that ends up being the verse, also. Then I came up with, like, the B-section of the song. And then him and Steve (Perry) threw around the melodies more and more — Steve did his thing on it and then — bang! Y'know, like an hour later, two hours later, there the song was. And before you knew it, we were in the studio recording it, and I listened back to it when it was done and I went, 'Man, I think that song's gonna be big.'”