Listen to Journey’s New Single ‘The Way We Used to Be’
Journey have released their first new song in a decade. You can listen to "The Way We Used to Be" below.
The track's animated video features a young couple forced to live apart as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown. The first thing they do once the pandemic is over is attend a Journey concert.
Guitarist Neal Schon said “The Way We Used to Be” "came out of one of the many loops I’d written while the long downtime continued with the pandemic we all had to deal with. ... I laid down the keyboard loop with overdubbed rhythm and a little blues lead guitar and sent to [keyboardist] Jonathan [Cain]. He sent it back very shortly after with demo vocals and lyrics, and I said to myself with a smile, We’ve still got it!"
The band's most recent album is 2011's Eclipse. "The Way We Used to Be" is also Journey's first new music since the departures of bassist Ross Valory and drummer Steve Smith, both of whom were fired from the group last year.
Schon said there's even more to come, including a new album. He noted that the song marks a "complete new beginning chapter for Journey ... with all of us collectively writing and working together. We now have over 26 songs that we’ve written and whittling it down to 10 or 12. We are very excited by all the new musical endeavors we’ve created together."
Journey are also slotted to perform at several festivals later this year, including Chicago's Lollapalooza in July and the iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas in September.
"I can guarantee you that with the new blood in the band, when we get together for two weeks of rehearsal before that show, we will be the new alternative," Schon said of Lollapalooza in an interview with radio host Eddie Trunk last month. "We're gonna add a lot to the show. We're gonna bring some new dynamics and open things up a bit and show people what the musicianship is really like in this band."