In 2007, Filipino singer Arnel Pineda, who previously cut his teeth in the cover band The Zoo, stepped up to the plate as the new frontman of Journey.
Pineda recently sat down with Loudwire in a reflective interview that saw him muse on his, uh, journey with Journey. The interview saw Pineda reveal that initially, he wasn’t a fan of the band’s signature earworm ‘Don’t Stop Believing.’
“Honestly, I was not a big fan of the song at first,” he admitted. “‘Open Arms’ … was the very first song I heard from them. … When I became a professional singer, a cover singer at the age of 16 years old, ‘Open Arms’ was the first song that I sang.”
He continued to rattle off three of his favourite Journey cuts, ‘Faithfully,’ ‘Winds of March’ and ‘Why Can’t This Night Go on Forever.’
“Mr. Steve Perry’s voice there is absolutely perfect. It just gets me going. When I’m sad or I’m happy, they just make me think about the good things in life,” he continued.
Pineda revealed that before joining Journey, his experience in the music industry was “a tough and cruel path.” The vocalist first got in contact with the band’s guitarist Neal Schon in 2007, “We had a good talk first, and he invited me over to San Francisco and I met [Journey],” he said.
Check out ‘Don’t Stop Believin” by Journey:
It was through that fateful interaction that Pineda had a change of tune towards ‘Don’t Stop Believin’: “I finally realized, this song has been waiting for me to realize that it was the soundtrack of my life,” he mused. “It really means so much to me now, and now every time that I go for something, it suddenly rings in my head. It’s those three words: Don’t stop believin’.”
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Pineda added: “To be in this band – because some people still consider me a karaoke singer, blah, blah, blah, whatever – I’m just proud and so grateful. I feel so blessed because I was given a chance to be part of such an iconic American band known around the world. What more could you ask for?”
Very wholesome stuff.
