Faithfully
by Journey
- 85
- BPM
- B major
- Key
- 1B
- Camelot
- 21
- Danceability
- 10
- Acousticness
Jonathan Cain began "Faithfully" with only the words "highway run into the midnight sun," written on a paper napkin aboard a tour bus headed to Saratoga Springs, New York. The next day he finished the whole song in half an hour. Cain completed the music on a backstage grand piano at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, where Journey played it for the first time. Neal Schon recalled that Cain told him the melody came to him in a dream. Decades later Cain called the song anointed.
He wrote it about a married man who is also a touring musician. Soon after it came out, Cain and his wife divorced. Steve Perry sang lyrics written by Cain, as the lead singer did on Toto's "Rosanna," and many fans assumed Perry had written it about a particular woman. A line about needing the clowns to make people smile was Cain's tribute to road manager Pat Morrow and stage manager Benny Collins.
Journey released "Faithfully" in 1983 as the second single from Frontiers. It peaked at number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. After Prince recorded "Purple Rain," he phoned Cain, worried it sounded too much like "Faithfully." Cain told him the two songs shared only the same four chords.
Faithfully runs at 85 BPM, the tempo of boom-bap hip-hop, reggae and slow R&B. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.82 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 706 ms. It is in B major, Camelot 1B, which shares its notes with Ab minor and mixes cleanly with E major and F# major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.