1983 · Behind the Songs
Written for an album, rescued for a movie, and finally claimed by the band’s greatest hits.
By 1983, Journey were at their commercial peak, and the Frontiers sessions were overflowing with material. “Ask the Lonely,” written by Steve Perry and Jonathan Cain and produced by Kevin Elson and Mike Stone, was initially intended for that year’s album Frontiers — but it didn’t make the cut. Instead, it surfaced on the soundtrack of Two of a Kind, a 1983 film starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John in their reunion after Grease, directed by John Herzfeld and released December 16, 1983. The film was a critical failure; the soundtrack went platinum.
The Song’s Own Journey
Released as a Journey single in 1984, “Ask the Lonely” climbed to No. 3 on Billboard’s Top Rock Tracks chart in January 1984 — driven by radio, since the single was sold only in Japan, with the Frontiers outtake “Troubled Child” on its B-side. The band later gave the song its proper place in the catalog: it appears on the 1988 Greatest Hits and as a bonus track on CD reissues of Frontiers, where it sits among the sessions that first produced it.
