The Reason Journey Didn’t Make Music Videos When Everyone Was Doing It

Journey’s 9^th studio album is named Raised on Radio for a reason – they weren’t such great fans of making videos out of their classic gems.

In the mid-80s when MTV is pretty much dominating the scene music, rock bands were eager to try the trend. But not for Journey though, who after a series of releasing MVs in the Steve Perry era, decided to break the tradition and went to pay respects to the first music medium that’s well-beloved by many: the radio.

The concept came after the band decided that they didn’t want to let their songs be pigeonholed by the images that videos tend to spoon-feed to them.

“One of the things we wanted to do was preserve the imagination … and not give them power to some director who we were introduced [to] for two hours and had to make life decisions about,” Jonathan Cain told Rockline.

Steve Perry added: “The main thing is it destroys the ability for you to take that song and make it your own, no matter what that means to you. One song does not mean the same thing to two people, and as soon as you’ve seen a video, you have now got a burnt vision from that point on — when you hear that song on the radio, you’ll see the video in your mind.”

While Trial By Fire came with Journey returning to their old habits of making MVs, it’s worth noting that they didn’t want any of the flamboyance and edginess in the clips, as evident in their music video for “When You Love a Woman.”