Between opening acts and headliners at concerts it’s customary to play recorded music for the fans to listen to. Various artists are usually played mostly as background music as the roadies change around the stage.
The Carrie Underwood/Hunter Hayes concert at the Stockton Arena was no different. Hayes opened with a rousing set, but when he left the stage, the house lights came on, the road crew got to work, and the recorded music started to play. About midway through, Journey’s 1981 song “Don’t Stop Believin’” began to play. Interestingly, many of the spectators began to sing along with it, and of those who sang most seemed to be young people who appeared to be in their teens and early 20s. They probably weren’t even born when the song was a hit. Oddly enough, most of the people old enough to be the parents of the ones singing weren’t joining in.
In 2009, the cast of the musical TV show “Glee” put out a cover version of “Don’t Stop Believin,’” which became a hit, as well. That’s probably where most of these young people heard it for the first time and why they were able to share a collective pop culture moment that started about 32 years before.
