Journey has just dropped “You Got The Best Of Me” — the band's lead single from its upcoming album, Freedom, which is set for release on July 8th. Journey is currently out on the road and plays tonight (April 27th) — with special guests Toto — at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena.
Co-founding guitarist Neal Schon said of the new track: “I wanted kind of a punky rendition of 'Any Way You Want It.' I usually don't go in saying I'm going to look for something like that, but then it just came to me, like 'Wheel In The Sky' did years ago. It just kind of flew out of my mouth. During the pandemic, there wasn’t much to do. I spent a lot of time in my little studio at home, learning how to play keyboards and looping. Some of those ideas ended up being songs. So it kind of came out of nowhere.”
Freedom marks Journey's first new studio set since Eclipse was released in May 2011. The Walmart exclusive debuted on the Billboard 200 album chart at Number 13 and was the band's second to feature current frontman Arnel Pineda.
Neal Schon recently explained how he urged his bandmates to look past the classics to showcase everything that Journey is about musically during its shows: “I said, 'Guys, I want you to have an open mind and check out this list that I've put together here, 'cause I think that we're missing a lot of these elements in our show. And there's no reason to be missing 'em, 'cause we own it. (Laughs) It's ours! Just 'cause we don't play it all the time doesn't mean that we shouldn't be playing just 'cause they're not so so-called 'pop hits.'' I've never been from the school where every song has to be a hit. I think we're really fortunate that we have so many hit songs — but you can't play 'em all in one show.”