![]() 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. 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. Contemporary Rolling Stone reviews were less favorable. 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." Colin Larkin awarded the album four out of five stars in the 2002 edition of the Virgin Encyclopedia of Popular Music. ![]() Reception and legacy Professional ratings Review scores 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. In July 2021, it was certified diamond by the RIAA, making it the band's most successful studio album and second most successful album overall behind Greatest Hits.Įscape was the band's first album with keyboardist Jonathan Cain, who replaced founding member Gregg Rolie after he left the band at the end of 1980. 2) – plus rock radio staple "Stone in Love". It topped the American Billboard 200 chart and features four hit Billboard Hot 100 singles – " Don't Stop Believin'" ( no. Interesting.Escape (stylized as E5C4P3 on the album cover) is the seventh studio album by American rock band Journey, released on Jby Columbia Records. ![]() Some species also insert their eggs into the dung ball and when they are ready, they Escape by bursting forth from the ball to begin their own Journey in search of their own dung piles. They gather and eat dung, rolling the dung into a ball and then rolling it around with them so it won’t be stolen by another beetle. I am sure that the imagery is meant to suggest outer space or some other planet, but I can’t help but remember the unique characteristics of the scarab beetle. The warm reds and yellows in the beetle and core contrast nicely with the cool blues and greens of the sphere and the background. I wonder how much their work influenced the band to adopt the scarab beetle as their logo, but I wasn’t able to find out anything about that.Īs far as the image itself, the super-saturated beetle/ship exploding from the molten cored sphere is beautifully composed and rendered. Hendrix died before it was completed, so Mouse and Kelly later co-opted it for Journey. The artwork for Escape and for Journey albums Infinity and Captured actually came from work they were creating for a Jimi Hendrix cover. I learned that the artist for this cover is by Mouse Stanley, who, with his long-time collaborator Alton Kelley, also created the iconic skeleton and roses image for the Grateful Dead. Apparently they weren’t confident enough in the audience’s ability to figure this out however, so they made sure to include an easily readable “Journey” in the top left corner. They have also slipped in a “3” instead of an “E” just to throw you another loop. In regard to the band name, the designer took the foreign atmosphere even further by turning the letters on the side and making them very wide and thin, so at first glance they are unrecognizable as the English alphabet. The thin lettering is also consistent with the digital, future-forward feel. At the time that this came out, it would have been really cool, not old or hackneyed, to spell the title this way. Escape was released in 1981, at the very beginnings of “Leet” speak, when substituting numbers for letters was becoming synonymous with futuristic, technologically advanced communication. Let’s put aside our weird hipster desires to denigrate anything not made by hand, or made on the computer to appear as though it were made by hand, and revel for a moment in the air-brushed, other-worldly beauty of this cover. It was also the second time that the scarab beetle appeared in their artwork, as it would many other times as well. I don’t know what the truth is, but in any case, they have cranked out a lot of great music, and along with that some pretty amazing album covers.Įscape was their 8th, and best-selling, studio album. You might then dismiss this band as shallow and focused on the money instead of the music. They had a very bumpy start, and were even asked by Columbia to change their musical style to be more appealing to a greater audience. Although they are successful now, the pop band Journey did not start out that way.
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