Journey Shares 1st New Song in Years: ‘The Way We Used To Be’

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A screen grab from “The Way We Used To Be” of Journey’s revised lineup

Journey has shared the group’s first new song in years. Following a brief teaser campaign on the band’s various social media platforms, they’ve released “The Way We Used To Be” on June 24, 2021, with an animated video. Journey’s new lineup of music veterans will be unveiled on stage this summer. It’s one of dozens of new songs that the band wrote during lockdown.

“‘The Way We Used To Be’ came out of one of the many loops I’d written [during] the long downtime [of] the pandemic,” says Journey’s sole remaining founding member, Neal Schon. The guitarist and songwriter kept fans in touch during the process by posting many jams and loops on his Twitter feed. “On ‘The Way We Used To Be’ I laid down the keyboard loop with over-dubbed rhythm and a little blues lead guitar and sent [it] to [longtime 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!

“I felt Jonathan nailed the lyrics and melody with haunting chorus ‘got to get back’ – ‘to the way we used to be.’ So this was the complete new beginning chapter for Journey – many more follow the same sequence with all of us collectively writing and working together.”

Watch the animated video for “The Way We Used To Be”

Schon says Journey have written dozens of new songs and are “whittling it down to 10 or 12.”

In 2020, Schon and Cain had a fractious split from founding member Ross Valory and longtime member Steve Smith. (Schon and Cain described the latter pair as attempting a “corporate coup d’état.” Earlier this year, the sides announced a settlement had been reached.) Veteran musicians Randy Jackson (bass guitar) and Narada Michael Walden (drums) joined the band in 2020. (Jackson had briefly been a member of Journey in the ’80s. Yes, he’s the longtime judge on American Idol.) Jason Derlatka (keyboards, backing vocals) completes the lineup.

They have three concerts scheduled so far including a performance at 2021’s Lollapalooza in Chicago and the annual I Heart Radio music festival in Las Vegas. Tickets are available here.

Watch the new lineup perform “Don’t Stop Believin'”