Styx · Artists & Legends
Styx always sounded bigger than a rock band.
Styx always sounded bigger than a rock band. Their songs had choruses built for thousands of voices, keyboards that shimmered like stage lights, and guitars that could turn from gentle to thunderous in a single bar. They were, at their best, a theater company and a rock band at the same time, and that combination made them one of the defining arena acts of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The band’s roots go back to Chicago, Illinois, where brothers Chuck Panozzo and John Panozzo began playing together in the early 1960s, later forming a band with Dennis DeYoung. By the early 1970s, with guitarist James “J.Y.” Young and later guitarist Tommy Shaw joining, the group that became Styx had its classic shape: DeYoung on keyboards and vocals, Young and Shaw on guitars and vocals, and the Panozzo brothers on bass and drums. They were Midwestern musicians with progressive ambitions and pop instincts, and they refused to choose between the two.
Their early albums on Wooden Nickel Records — Styx in 1972, Styx II in 1973, The Serpent Is Rising in 1973, and Man of Miracles in 1974 — showed a band learning its craft. “Lady,” from Styx II, became their first major hit after it was re-released as a single, and it announced DeYoung as a writer of grand, romantic ballads. The band’s sound was already distinctive: layered keyboards, strong harmonies, and a willingness to be dramatic.
The breakthrough came after they signed with A&M Records. Equinox, released in 1975, and Crystal Ball, released in 1976, built their audience, but it was The Grand Illusion, released in 1977, that made them stars. That album gave them “Come Sail Away,” a song that begins as a gentle piano ballad and builds into a full-throated rock anthem, and it remains one of their signature records. Pieces of Eight, released in 1978, followed with “Renegade,” a darker, harder song that showed the band’s rock edge. Cornerstone, released in 1979, gave them “Babe,” a tender ballad written by DeYoung that became their first number one hit in the United States.
What made Styx different from many arena bands was the balance of voices and visions within the group. DeYoung brought theatricality and melody. Shaw brought a rocker’s energy and a gift for concise, powerful songs. Young brought grit and a harder edge. That balance produced albums that could move from a love ballad to a science-fiction epic without losing the listener, because the harmonies and the musicianship held everything together. Their concerts became spectacles, with elaborate staging and a band that clearly loved playing to large crowds.
Paradise Theatre, released in 1981, was another peak. A concept album about a Chicago theater, it produced “The Best of Times,” a nostalgic, uplifting song that became a major hit, and “Too Much Time on My Hands,” another radio favorite. The album showed Styx at their most polished and most confident, a band that could tell a story across an entire record while still delivering singles built for the radio.
Then came Kilroy Was Here, released in 1983, the band’s most ambitious and most controversial project. A rock opera about a future in which rock music is outlawed, it produced “Mr. Roboto,” a song with a robotic vocal effect and a chorus that became instantly recognizable. The album was a commercial success, but the elaborate theatrical tour that accompanied it, and the creative tensions it exposed, contributed to a break in the band. Styx split in the mid-1980s, and for a time it seemed the story was over.
It was not. The band reunited in the 1990s, and although lineups changed — with DeYoung eventually leaving and Lawrence Gowan joining on keyboards and vocals — Styx continued to tour and record. Albums such as Brave New World in 1999, Cyclorama in 2003, The Mission in 2017, and Crash of the Crown in 2021 showed a band still interested in ambitious, melodic rock. On stage, Shaw, Young, and their bandmates kept the classic songs alive for audiences that now spanned generations, with “Come Sail Away,” “Renegade,” and “Mr. Roboto” still bringing crowds to their feet.
Styx’s legacy is sometimes debated by critics who found their theatricality too much, but audiences have never been confused. Their best songs combine craft and feeling in a way that few arena bands matched. They could write a ballad that made a stadium feel intimate, and they could write a rock song that made a small room feel huge. They understood that rock music, at its best, is both personal and communal: a singer telling you something true, and thousands of people singing it back.
Through the 2000s and 2010s, Styx settled into touring and revisiting its catalog. The band released Big Bang Theory in 2005, a set of cover versions of songs by artists who had shaped its members, and it recorded with the Contemporary Youth Orchestra for a 2006 live release. In 2010 and 2011 it issued two volumes of Regeneration, re-recording older songs with the current lineup, letting newer members put their stamp on familiar material.
When the band returned to original songs, it took its time. The Mission, released in 2017, grew from a guitar riff Tommy Shaw had written in 2015, and became a concept album about a mission to Mars in 2033, with Will Evankovich producing and co-writing most of its songs. Crash of the Crown followed in 2021, again produced by Evankovich, and was the last album to feature bassist Ricky Phillips, who later left to spend more time with his family. Together, the two records showed a band still thinking in album-length stories.
Listening to Styx now, the range is the revelation. One moment you are sailing away on a piano melody. The next you are running with a renegade. The next you are laughing at a robot who just wants to be human. That variety, held together by harmony and heart, is why Styx endures. They did not just play arenas. They built them, song by song, out of melody, drama, and the belief that rock music could be both big and human at the same time.