Escape (stylized as E5C4P3 on the album cover) is the seventh studio album by American rock band Journey, released on July 31, 1981. It topped the American Billboard 200 chart[1] and features four hit Billboard Hot 100 singles – "Don't Stop Believin'" (#9), "Who's Crying Now" (#4), "Still They Ride" (#19) and "Open Arms" (#2)[2] – plus rock radio staple "Stone in Love." It was certified 9x platinum by the RIAA[3] and sold over twelve million copies worldwide, making it the band's most successful studio album and second most successful album overall behind Greatest Hits.
Background and writing
Escape was the band's first album with keyboardist Jonathan Cain who replaced founding keyboardist Gregg Rolie after he left the band at the end of 1980. The album was co-produced by former Lynyrd Skynyrd sound technician Kevin Elson and one-time Queen engineer Mike Stone, who also engineered the album.
Mike DeGagne of AllMusic retrospectively awarded Escape four-and-a-half stars out of five, writing, "The songs are timeless, and as a whole, they have a way of rekindling the innocence of youthful romance and the rebelliousness of growing up, built from heartfelt songwriting and sturdy musicianship".[4]Colin Larkin awarded the album four out of five stars in the 2002 edition of the VirginEncyclopedia of Popular Music.[5] Contemporary Rolling Stone reviews were less favourable. The first review of 1981 by Deborah Frost marked Journey as heavy metal posers and the music in the album as easily playable by any session musician. In the 2004 edition of their album guide, Rolling Stone awarded the album two-and-a-half stars out of five, which was nonetheless an improvement from Dave Marsh's one star rating in the 1983 edition of the publication.[8] The same critic years later wrote that "Journey, originally a progressive rock band, experienced strong resentment from many music critics after they embraced the pop sensibilities of the 1980s with smash hits like "Don't Stop Believin'" and "Open Arms".[9]
In 1988, Kerrang! readers voted Escape the greatest AOR album of all time.[10] The following year, the magazine ranked Escape #32 in "The 100 Greatest Heavy Metal Albums of All Time".[11] A 2000 Virgin poll saw the album voted the 24th greatest heavy metal/alternative rock album of all time.[12] In 2001, Classic Rock ranked the album #22 in "The 100 Greatest Rock Albums of All Time".[13] In 2006, the same publication recognized the importance of the album's contribution to popular music in the 1980s by including it in their "The 200 Greatest Albums of the 80s" as one of the twenty greatest albums of 1981.[14]Q magazine ranked Escape 15th in its "Records it's OK to Love" in 2006.[15]
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