JOURNEY - FAITHFULLY

Released: April 1983

Charts: US: #12 

“Faithfully” is a 1983 ballad by Journey from their album Frontiers, written by keyboardist Jonathan Cain. It reached No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and became one of the band’s most iconic songs, despite lacking a traditional chorus. The lyrics reflect the struggles of life on the road while trying to maintain a committed relationship. Cain wrote it about his then-wife, singer Tané, though the couple later divorced. 

Jonathan Cain described writing “Faithfully” as a supernatural experience, saying the song came to him in a dream and was completed within 30 minutes. He called it “a love song to God” and felt divinely inspired to finish it without help. The opening lyrics came to him while on a tour bus, and he later wrote the rest at a piano. The line “We all need the clowns to make us smile” honors Journey’s road and stage managers. Guitarist Neal Schon said Cain claimed to have dreamed the melody, calling it a rare and inspiring creative moment.

Journey’s first music video was for this song and marked a shift into the MTV era. Struggling to find a director in the U.S., their manager Herbie Herbert hired NFL Films to shoot the video, using a behind-the-scenes “life on tour” concept that paralleled the song’s lyrics. The footage showed the band traveling, performing, and even Steve Perry shaving his mustache. The video, which drew from the Journey: Frontiers and Beyond documentary narrated by John Facenda, helped define a new style of “road video” later adopted by many major rock acts.