Journey: Old rockers have a Gleeful comeback

Your average pop song has a short-lived shelf life. With a bit of luck, a successful band's new single will land in the top 10 in the week of release and, if it's a real winner, it might linger for a few weeks in the upper reaches of the charts.

Thereafter it's likely to be replaced by the next big tune with a Velcro hook, becoming a nostalgic memory for all but the most dedicated fans.

So why are two versions of power ballad Don't Stop Believin', one by Journey, who wrote it, and another by the cast of E4 high school comedy Glee, sitting in the UK top 30 almost 30 years after the track's initial release? Why has the track been certified gold in the United States, where it's been downloaded 600,000 times?

"We've made more money in the past two years than we ever made in our entire lives, " marvels Jonathan Cain, Journey's keyboard player and co-writer of the song with singer Steve Perry and guitarist Neal Schon.

The band were formed in 1973 in California by former members of Latin rock band Santana. They were always far more successful in their homeland than over here, where Don't Stop Believin' became their only official single release to chart, at No6 in 1981.

Even at home, the song stalled at No8.

However, despite this relatively inauspicious start, Don't Stop Believin' has proved deathless over the decades.

It's a heartfelt, hands-in-the-air, rousing song with lyrics that speak of yearning and optimism: "Just a small town girl/Livin' in a lonely world" and a chorus imploring: "Don't stop believin'/Hold on to that feelin'".

First it started popping up in TV series and movies, from Adam Sandler film The Wedding Singer and Monster, starring Charlize Theron, to TV hospital comedy Scrubs and the cartoon Family Guy, receiving a bigger boost in 2007 when it sound tracked a climactic episode of The Sopranos, a series capable of luring more than 13million viewers.

It started making its mark on the UK charts after X Factor winner Joe McElderry's November 2009 performance of Don't Stop Believin' during the series' Rock Week, prompting 7,000 people to download the song on iTunes. When he reprised the track in the show's final, he was watched by 20million viewers.

However, globally, the biggest impetus behind the song's late flowering renaissance comes from Glee, which in January aired a cover of the track in its opening episode, as well as using it to soundtrack its trailer.

Since November, Don't Stop Believin' has been downloaded on iTunes more than 400,000 times, entering the Billboard Hot 100 at No4. The Glee cast's version was also available as a download and climbed to No2 here.

According to Gennaro Castaldo of HMV: "If you were to add up all the various covers of the song in recent months you'd probably be looking at a No1 single in its own right. It was Joe on The X Factor who really put it on the map and, since then, Glee has taken the song to a whole new level and introduced it to a younger generation of music fans in the US, UK and around the world."

Why does Cain think the song has such an impressive lifespan? "It's probably something in the lyric which says things are possible if you believe," he muses, explaining that the song was inspired by people-watching on Sunset Boulevard when he first moved to Hollywood in the early Seventies.

"Everybody was there to earn some money, figure out who they were and look for their dream. It was also the way we laid the song out. It had a tension to it, we wanted it to sound like somebody going somewhere."

As if the onslaught on TV and radio were not enough, there's also a Broadway musical, Rock Of Ages, that's heading for the UK next year.

Its plot echoes the lyrics of Don't Stop Believin'. The blurb reads: "In 1987 on the Sunset Strip, a small town girl met a big city rocker and in LA's most famous rock club, they fell in love to the greatest songs of the Eighties. . . Don't miss this awesomely good time about dreaming big, playing loud and partying on!"

The era of the download has transformed the lifespan of the single.

A song no longer needs to be formally released and promoted by a record label to chart and nor does it depend upon radio and TV airplay. Fans are more powerful than ever as the internet's phenomenally popular networking sites give the word-of-mouth process a fast-track global reach.

Castaldo agrees: "None of the song's belated success would be possible without the galvanising impact of internet and digital technology, which now makes it possible for classic tracks to be rediscovered and to enter the charts again as a download years after the original single was released."

It is also relevant that the clearly delineated music tribes of recent decades have been replaced with a more fluid and flexible approach to music. The world has changed since the days when we used to save our pocket money to buy a single LP. After the heyday of Adult Oriented Rock in the Eighties, poodle hair, leather trousers and heartfelt guitar ballads became the last word in naff. However, today's young fans pride themselves on broad-ranging tastes.

So Journey's journey is far from over. After a decade-long hiatus, they reformed in the mid-Nineties, eventually replacing their singer Steve Perry with Arnel Pineda. Wisely, the band never sold off their publishing rights, and though Cain says their catalogue has experienced "up and down periods", he admits the whole band could have retired on their royalties as much as a decade ago. Still, they have no intention of doing anything of the sort.

Having played 90,000-seater stadiums in the Eighties, their reunion saw them reduced to 2,000-seater halls but they are now back to selling up to 30,000 tickets per gig. They hope to play some dates in the UK in the coming year.

However, Cain concedes that the band's longevity is largely down to Don't Stop Believin'. "Every band needs a song and Don't Stop Believin' really has been that song."