MR

New single debuts tomorrow, Tuesday May 17th.

https://journeymusic.lnk.to/LetItRain?f ... J7efE_wjJ4

The preview on Journey’s social media is 5 seconds of a genuinely shitty guitar riff.

I like TWWUTB and really love YGTBOM (mix aside), but Neal picked a shitty excerpt of the song to be a preview.

Gideon wrote:The preview on Journey’s social media is 5 seconds of a genuinely shitty guitar riff.

I like TWWUTB and really love YGTBOM (mix aside), but Neal picked a shitty excerpt of the song to be a preview.

I kinda dig it.

Strange choice. It's a gritty album track, not a single.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjBGF7ok1mI

Sounds like an unreleased Bad English song. I need to listen with my headphones, but it's ok, I guess.

This does not sound like Journey.

I like it. But I hate the opening riff. If the song started at the :15 second mark, it would be much better.

Appropriately titled.

Let It Rain = beer break/pee break song.

Andrew wrote:Strange choice. It's a gritty album track, not a single.

Agree 100%, and I like to hear guitar-driven tracks….

I was listening to Arrival on the way home last night, and finished it on the way in this morning, and it’s such a treat to listen to this album after so many years. To me, it really holds up and shows me that it’s so important for a Perryl-ess Journey to have strong outside influences work with the band — producers who will not just bless everything. Let It Rain is, to me, an example of what happens when Neal is left to his druthers. I love his work, but I feel he is much better when others take his ideas and build on them. This was likely a riff he came up with at home and just didn’t pass around and ask the rest of the band to work with it. To really craft it into a much more interesting song. Listen to Arrival: The songs on that album change tempo, key and mood in a way that makes the songs much more interesting, complex, and enjoyable.

I digress a bit, but I’m not impressed by this track — certainly not as a single unless he’s trying to gain interest with the rock-oriented websites/reviewers.

It's like they are trying to prove something. What they are trying to prove I have no idea.

What a bizarre choice given where this band is at these days.

*Shakes his head and walks away*

Surely the worst track to ever come out under the Journey banner? Who signed off on this crap?

If it didn't say Journey on the cover I would have labelled it "Neal Schon spirals out of control with random singer". If I didn't know it was Arnel I wouldn't have noticed.

Journey RIP 1974-2006.

danielb wrote:Surely the worst track to ever come out under the Journey banner? Who signed off on this crap?

If it didn't say Journey on the cover I would have labelled it "Neal Schon spirals out of control with random singer". If I didn't know it was Arnel I wouldn't have noticed.

Journey RIP 1974-2006.

I think Sammy Hagar would sound good singing this song. It would fit with his band Circle.

It reminded me instantly of Bad English, maybe Rockin' Horse. Or maybe a Generations album track. I don't love it but it certainly isn't a bad song to me and it isn't unbelievable that Neal and Jon would write a song like this.

I’ve enjoyed Journey since 2003, and I hate saying bad things about them, but they’ve made some absolutely absurd decisions in the last couple of years. This track is straight up bad. Reminds me of a Whitesnake B side or something.

DK23 wrote:It reminded me instantly of Bad English, maybe Rockin' Horse. Or maybe a Generations album track. I don't love it but it certainly isn't a bad song to me and it isn't unbelievable that Neal and John would write a song like this.

Yeah, Let It Rain definitely conjures memories of Rockin' Horse. AP's voice is great but unrecognizable in parts of the song (who's singing with him? Jon? Jason?).

You Got the Best of Me reminds me a lot of Change For the Better from Revelation and AP's vocals have a lot of Bryan Adams-Summer-of-69 inflections.

I like LIR, but it's a weird choice for a "single," it needs to shave off the shitty first 15 seconds, and currently YGTBOM is the best of the three tracks so far despite its shitty mix.

ECL1P53 is shaping up to be the zenith of Journey's post-Perry efforts.

Archetype wrote:I’ve enjoyed Journey since 2003, and I hate saying bad things about them, but they’ve made some absolutely absurd decisions in the last couple of years. This track is straight up bad. Reminds me of a Whitesnake B side or something.

I wonder if Neal dictated this as a single. It isn't listed in that graphic from the Tweet that showed the singles. Seems like a last minute decision.

Also, they turned off comments on the video, last I looked.

ChicagoSTYX wrote:

danielb wrote:Surely the worst track to ever come out under the Journey banner? Who signed off on this crap?

If it didn't say Journey on the cover I would have labelled it "Neal Schon spirals out of control with random singer". If I didn't know it was Arnel I wouldn't have noticed.

Journey RIP 1974-2006.

I think Sammy Hagar would sound good singing this song. It would fit with his band Circle.

I agree with this, too. Hagar would sound good on this.

Gideon wrote:ECL1P53 is shaping up to be the zenith of Journey's post-Perry efforts.

Eclipse is watered down Journey. Arrival is head and shoulders above any of the Arnel albums, not least because the singer on that album had a voice of his own. They managed to do a "Van Hagar".

danielb wrote:

Gideon wrote:ECL1P53 is shaping up to be the zenith of Journey's post-Perry efforts.

Eclipse is watered down Journey. Arrival is head and shoulders above any of the Arnel albums, not least because the singer on that album had a voice of his own. They managed to do a "Van Hagar".

Arrival is great but ultimately a Diet Trial By Fire for me. Inferior production, inferior musicianship (love Deeno but Smitty's drumming on TBF is leagues better than what Deen gave us on Arrival), a couple of snooze-fest ballads. And with love and all due respect to SA, AP is the better singer.

ECL1P53 was Journey with testicular fortitude. Resonate, Chain of Love, Edge of the Moment, She's a Mystery, Human Feel, Ritual, To Whom It May Concern are all excellent and epic. Even the worst of the album, City of Hope, Someone, Tantra, edge towards mediocre rather than bad.

Gideon wrote:

danielb wrote:

Gideon wrote:ECL1P53 is shaping up to be the zenith of Journey's post-Perry efforts.

Eclipse is watered down Journey. Arrival is head and shoulders above any of the Arnel albums, not least because the singer on that album had a voice of his own. They managed to do a "Van Hagar".

Arrival is great but ultimately a Diet Trial By Fire for me. Inferior production, inferior musicianship (love Deeno but Smitty's drumming on TBF is leagues better than what Deen gave us on Arrival), a couple of snooze-fest ballads. And with love and all due respect to SA, AP is the better singer.

ECL1P53 was Journey with testicular fortitude. Resonate, Chain of Love, Edge of the Moment, She's a Mystery, Human Feel, Ritual, To Whom It May Concern are all excellent and epic. Even the worst of the album, City of Hope, Someone, Tantra, edge towards mediocre rather than bad.

Neal was to Eclipse what Perry was to ROR. The result is Neal dominated most of the songs to the point where the did not sound like Journey at all to me, even less so then this single.

On TBF, Steve Smith admitted that he approached the album as a session drummer. He was not there acting like a full member of the band - because he did not want to be a member past this one album.

IMO, Arrival has been the best Journey album released post-Perry. In fact, it is up to par with any of the Perry era album. I don't have much of a problem with the production. The bass is slightly boomy to me, but other than that, I find nothing wrong with it.

Gideon wrote:And with love and all due respect to SA, AP is the better singer.

I beg to differ Augeri was crucial to Arrival and for giving them a new lease on life post Perry. AP is blessed with a great voice, but he is less nuanced than Perry and he is singing Cain's lyrics with an accent. I get the impression that he's not really feeling what he's singing, as a non-native speaker and non-writer, and as a result, it leaves me cold. Hence, watered down Journey.

Add the horrendous production values of the 2 new Freedom tracks to the mix (no pun intended), and this is Journey only in name. I doubt any casual Journey fans who hear this single think to themselves: "wow, Journey is back". How could they when it doesn't sound anything like Journey. It's not that I'm against progression and straying from the formula (they did it beautifully on both TBF and Arrival), but this is just uninspired stuff. From the mix, to the writing, to the performance. More than uninspired, actually.

danielb wrote:

Gideon wrote:And with love and all due respect to SA, AP is the better singer.

I beg to differ Augeri was crucial to Arrival and for giving them a new lease on life post Perry. AP is blessed with a great voice, but he is less nuanced than Perry and he is singing Cain's lyrics with an accent. I get the impression that he's not really feeling what he's singing, as a non-native speaker and non-writer, and as a result, it leaves me cold. Hence, watered down Journey.

Add the horrendous production values of the 2 new Freedom tracks to the mix (no pun intended), and this is Journey only in name. I doubt any casual Journey fans who hear this single think to themselves: "wow, Journey is back". How could they when it doesn't sound anything like Journey. It's not that I'm against progression and straying from the formula (they did it beautifully on both TBF and Arrival), but this is just uninspired stuff. From the mix, to the writing, to the performance. More than uninspired, actually.

Totally valid opinions, but AP is a more technically gifted singer than SA. Broader range, stronger voice, more durable under the rigors of this catalog.

I am unable to listen to the song, but I have a feeling that I will love this song.

Based on the comments I assume that it's a Hard Rocker? I will love that if it is.
The fact that there's a couple of comparisons that have been made between this song and Bad English excites me. Don't get me wrong, I'm an even bigger Journey fan than I am a Bad English fan, but I loved Bad English, especially their first album.

IMO Journey are at a stage in their careers where they should be experimenting a good deal. Yes, they should still sound like Journey on most of their songs, but occasionally throwing in songs that recall Bad English or Hardline or maybe even Whitesnake is welcomed by me.

Someone said that Journey seem to be trying to prove something, but that they don't know what.

I can't blame them, most of all Neal, for wanting to experiment with Harder Rocking songs. And yes, I think to an extent that Neal is trying (And succeeding at) to prove that he can play as fast and heavy as any other guitarist out there. I can't blame him seeing as he can play as fast or heavy as any other guitarist for the most part, and yet during the Perry years he was being largely forced to play very restrained compared to how he would have liked to have been playing, and he never got as much credit as being a Hard Rock guitarist as he should have gotten.

Journey have played a million and one ballads and mid tempo songs over the years. They should be Rocking more now like they did on Eclipse.

I was hoping that with Randy Jackson on bass and Michael Walden on drums that the Freedom album was going to at times have some Funk and Blues aspects to it. And I guess that it's not based on what I've read so far, which is kind of disappointing. But I still welcome the Harder Rocking aspects of songs like "You Got The Best Of Me" and I assume "Let It Rain?"

Journey/Survivor wrote:I am unable to listen to the song, but I have a feeling that I will love this song.

Based on the comments I assume that it's a Hard Rocker? I will love that if it is.
The fact that there's a couple of comparisons that have been made between this song and Bad English excites me. Don't get me wrong, I'm an even bigger Journey fan than I am a Bad English fan, but I loved Bad English, especially their first album.

IMO Journey are at a stage in their careers where they should be experimenting a good deal. Yes, they should still sound like Journey on most of their songs, but occasionally throwing in songs that recall Bad English or Hardline or maybe even Whitesnake is welcomed by me.

Someone said that Journey seem to be trying to prove something, but that they don't know what.

I can't blame them, most of all Neal, for wanting to experiment with Harder Rocking songs. And yes, I think to an extent that Neal is trying (And succeeding at) to prove that he can play as fast and heavy as any other guitarist out there. I can't blame him seeing as he can play as fast or heavy as any other guitarist for the most part, and yet during the Perry years he was being largely forced to play very restrained compared to how he would have liked to have been playing, and he never got as much credit as being a Hard Rock guitarist as he should have gotten.

Journey have played a million and one ballads and mid tempo songs over the years. They should be Rocking more now like they did on Eclipse.

I was hoping that with Randy Jackson on bass and Michael Walden on drums that the Freedom album was going to at times have some Funk and Blues aspects to it. And I guess that it's not based on what I've read so far, which is kind of disappointing. But I still welcome the Harder Rocking aspects of songs like "You Got The Best Of Me" and I assume "Let It Rain?"

Agree with all of this

Just like "You Got the Best of Me", this one is growing on me with each listen. I'm diggin' the funkier vibe, but I guess this album really is going to be a showcase of bass, drums, and guitars burying Arnel in the mix. If his vocals were more in the front of the song it would at least give it more of a traditional Journey feel. Guessing that really isn't what we are going for this time around though and the end result is coming off pretty muffled. I miss the days of instrument separation and giving all aspects of a song room to breathe.

Journey/Survivor wrote:I am unable to listen to the song, but I have a feeling that I will love this song.

Based on the comments I assume that it's a Hard Rocker? I will love that if it is.
The fact that there's a couple of comparisons that have been made between this song and Bad English excites me. Don't get me wrong, I'm an even bigger Journey fan than I am a Bad English fan, but I loved Bad English, especially their first album.

IMO Journey are at a stage in their careers where they should be experimenting a good deal. Yes, they should still sound like Journey on most of their songs, but occasionally throwing in songs that recall Bad English or Hardline or maybe even Whitesnake is welcomed by me.

Someone said that Journey seem to be trying to prove something, but that they don't know what.

I can't blame them, most of all Neal, for wanting to experiment with Harder Rocking songs. And yes, I think to an extent that Neal is trying (And succeeding at) to prove that he can play as fast and heavy as any other guitarist out there. I can't blame him seeing as he can play as fast or heavy as any other guitarist for the most part, and yet during the Perry years he was being largely forced to play very restrained compared to how he would have liked to have been playing, and he never got as much credit as being a Hard Rock guitarist as he should have gotten.

Journey have played a million and one ballads and mid tempo songs over the years. They should be Rocking more now like they did on Eclipse.

I was hoping that with Randy Jackson on bass and Michael Walden on drums that the Freedom album was going to at times have some Funk and Blues aspects to it. And I guess that it's not based on what I've read so far, which is kind of disappointing. But I still welcome the Harder Rocking aspects of songs like "You Got The Best Of Me" and I assume "Let It Rain?"

Sorry, but the more I listen to this song, the less I like it. I went back and listened to Rockin' Horse, and it is much, much better. It really shows how mediocre this song is. If you watered down Rockin' Horse's lyrics, and had John Waite do his best Sammy Hagar imitation, then you would have a more comparable song. It's an incredibly average song that REMINDS me of Rockin' Horse, mainly because of the repeated guitar riff.

Three singles and three misses, IMO. Everything is just so average, mediocre.

What is funny is if you go and watch any reaction video with some millennial they all seem to absolutely LOVE this stuff. One guy even said he LOVED the sound of "You Got the Best of Me" because he thought they were trying to make it sound like it
would live in concert. I really don't get it. Another said it sounded like 70's era Journey....what?

I love this song. It is Journey spreading their wings. This would have been awesome on Raised on Radio. It funky like Raised on Radio, but it rocks which that album lacked. However, it also sounds like a modern song. Neal isn't resting on his laurels. He is being creative. Once again, the lyrics are excellent. If radio played current Journey which they don't, I could see this being a hit. Now, I am excited to see what else they have on Freedom!

JourneyHard wrote:This would have been awesome on Raised on Radio.

If this song was on ROR, it would have stood out like a donkey's dick. Utterly uncomparable.

Man, I got thoughts about this song and about many of the comments. Personally, I kinda dig the track. Definitely not a single, but it just feels cool to me. Anyone who wants to hear "traditional" or "classic" Journey, this ain't it. This is a throwback, more of a jam. For those who say it's Journey's worst? They seem to have forgotten the hate Ross' Generations track got. What surprised me the most is the bass line in the opening. So low! And kind of......sticky? But doesn't remind me of Randy in the least. And there is definitely a doubling of the vocals, again most notably in the beginning. Almost sounds like Neal, but doubtful. I agree this sounds like one of the pandemic Era jams that Neal did on FB. But it hints at Red13 to me, and I'm down with that. And while I no longer notice the mix on the EP, I would say this shares that trait as well. I feel like most of the mix was done by Jon in his studio. This album, so far, feels self-produced as did Red13. But I got past that, I'll get past this. Nothing released so far feels like an undeniable hit. But I am excited by the opportunity for variety.

The singer in the background is probably the second keyboard guy....he is listed in the credits.