Who's Crying Now?

This is the case of a great rock ballad with lush Steve Perry vocals, memorable Jonathan Cain keyboard lines, and one of the most stellar guitar solos in the '80s rock canon by Neal Schon. And while the emotion conveyed by the music and vocals is palpable, the lyrics are just ridiculous:

So many stormy nights, so many wrongs or rights
Neither could change their headstrong ways
And in a lover's rage, they tore another page
The fightin' is worth the love they save

Can there be a bigger cliché about bad relationships than stormy weather? And where is the missing metaphor from which the "page" is torn? You shouldn't tear pages when it's storming out, anyway, they'll get all soggy. As in so many pop songs, the words seem to have emerged from the diary scrawl of an eighth grader. Nevertheless, the lyrics are the only complaint I have about this classic '80s brood.

Artist: Journey
Year: 1981
Rating: Warmly warm