Considered one of Journey’s best-known songs got here collectively in lower than 48 hours.
Launched Jan. 5, 1983, “Separate Methods (Worlds Aside)” was a powerhouse monitor that instantly resonated with listeners. The music was written on the street as Journey, nonetheless driving excessive on the success of their 1981 album Escape, discovered themselves taking part in to hundreds of passionate followers on a nightly foundation.
Regardless of their recognition, all was not effectively inside the band. Two of Journey’s members, guitarist Neal Schon and bass participant Ross Valory, have been going by way of messy divorces on the time. Steve Perry and Jonathan Cain witnessed how the respective breakups have been affecting their bandmates and sought to tug artistic inspiration from the scenario.
“There’s acquired to be a extra soulful method of this,” Perry reportedly advised Cain. The 2 started engaged on a music thought, one thing Journey didn’t sometimes do whereas on tour.
“Often we do not write songs that far prematurely of an album,” Cain admitted to Hit Parader in 1983. “However on that event, Steve and I have been simply working an thought backstage and all of it got here collectively.”
Hearken to ‘Separate Methods (Worlds Aside)’
“Separate Methods (Worlds Aside)” developed rapidly, with Perry and Cain crafting the music’s primary construction. The tune’s charming synth line was initially formulated on a bit Casio keyboard. The musicians have been aiming to create one thing that was “actual pressing sounding, however nonetheless had rhythm and melody.” In lower than a day, they offered the concept to the remainder of the band, with all the Journey lineup then fleshing the music out throughout soundcheck.
Quickly the band opted so as to add the tune to their set record, despite the fact that “Separate Methods” had not but been recorded, not to mention launched. Response to the monitor was electrical.
“It doesn’t matter the place we put this music [in the set] as a result of it has all the time had a robust impact on the viewers, all the way in which again to the primary time we performed it—earlier than it was even recorded,” Schon recalled in 2008 to Guitar World. “It was written on tour and we threw it within the set to see how it might go down. The viewers had an incredible response to it with out even understanding what it was. A giant a part of Journey’s affect comes from Motown blended with R&B and blues, and that’s just about the place ‘Separate Methods’ is coming from. It’s acquired a heavier guitar than an R&B music, however I believe that’s what makes it sound like Journey.”
The band formally launched “Separate Methods (Worlds Aside)” because the lead single from Frontiers on Jan. 5, 1983. The tune rapidly raced up the charts, reaching No. 8 on the Billboard Scorching 100. Its accompanying music video earned heavy rotation on MTV – which can not have been a great factor. The clip, filmed on a wharf in New Orleans, was panned for its cheesiness. Every little thing within the video – from Journey’s apparel, to the band’s air instrument taking part in – grew to become fodder for jokes.
Watch the Music Video for ‘Separate Methods (Worlds Aside)’
“I am at a loss to elucidate that video,” Cain admitted within the e-book I Need My MTV. “I’ll by no means reside down these air keyboards. It doesn’t matter what else I’ve performed in my profession, in the end individuals discover a solution to ask me in regards to the ‘Separate Methods’ video.”
Nonetheless, the clip did little to uninteresting the recognition of “Separate Methods.” The music stays considered one of Journey’s definitive tracks and ranks as their sixth most-played music in live performance, in response to Setlist.fm.
In 2022, the tune once more gained notoriety when it was used within the trailer for the hit Netflix sequence, Stranger Issues; “Separate Methods” resonating with a brand new technology of followers as soon as extra.
The Greatest Track From Each Journey Album
Singers could come, and singers most definitely could go, however some nice songs stay.
