Mondays on Music #2

This post is probably long overdue and probably very overdone, but the idea has been nagging at me for months. It really all started over this past summer. I spend my summers working at Indian and Forest Acres camps. They are brother and sister camps in Maine, with kids ranging in age from 7-17. What struck me as odd was that almost every kid in camp knew all the lyrics to “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey.

How could this be? I wondered. I wasn’t even born yet when the song was released, and some of the kids at camp were born after Y2K (that still boggles my mind sometimes). I had totally forgotten that the pilot episode of Glee had aired just before camp started. Since then it has turned into a craze.

Now, I do watch Glee, and I do like listening to Journey, but it seems to me that “Don’t Stop Believin’” has become one of the most overplayed songs in the last six months. I don’t think that there have been many days that have gone by where I have not heard some version of this song either on the radio, in restaurants, stores, or on TV. Journey used to be the band that you pulled out when you needed a pick me up. Or it was the tasteful karaoke scene from a Family Guy episode. It was all but inevitable that Journey and “Don’t Stop Believin’” would be used in NBC’s “The Sing Off.”

It is great that Glee is getting kids more into music and showing them it is cool to do things like be in a chorus (I was never cool in chorus in high school). On the other hand, it is kind of a bummer that it may be the cause of the massacre of a great song. Don’t get me wrong, the arrangement of “Don’t Stop Believin’” that the Glee kids do is great, but how many high schools are now trying to do that song? How many times do I have to hear it?

I suppose it is kind of unfortunate that this little rant was what I was inspired to write, but I think it had something to do with hearing “Don’t Stop Believin’” once again while I was pondering a topic for my second Music on Mandays. I don’t think the fact that Journey has become a slightly overplayed band will stop me from blasting their songs when I need a pick-up!


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