Survivor

About Survivor

Sports fans everywhere owe a debt to 80's rockers Survivor. Yes, "Eye of the Tiger." In Rocky III, that single song drove a sweaty Balboa on to victory while also providing amateur and professional parodists with a couple decades worth of satire material and counting. Whether you appreciate the genuine, earnest sentiment of the song or you like it for more ironic reasons, Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" isn't going anywhere anytime soon. But there's more to Survivor than the one song. Today, Survivor could probably walk down the street anonymously, but for a time in the early 80's the band owned modern rock radio. Survivor's accessible anthems like "Burning Heart" and "The Search Is Over" made perfect summer jams, whether you were in high school or driving to work. Ultimately, Survivor were supplanted by the more over-the-top, overtly sexual sound of hair metal, but up until then their heartland rock anthems were nearly inescapable. So how does Survivor's back catalog hold up today? Surprisingly well. They certainly sound less ridiculous than most of hair metal's spandex-clad B-list. Survivor got their start back in 1977, in one of Chicago's blue-collar neighborhoods. After spending several years perfecting their driving rock sound, the band finally had a commercial success with 1981's "Poor Man's Son" off of the album Premonition. The song made it's way all the way to Sylvester Stallone, who empathized with its down-but-not-out attitude. The actor personally asked Survivor to write a theme for Rocky III. The song worked so well that Survivor also went on to provide the theme for Rocky IV. They also did the theme for The Karate Kid, "The Moment of Truth." Survivor's biggest album was 1984's Vital Signs, which made it all the way to no.16 on Billboard. Survivor surprised fans in 1988, when their Too Hot to Sleep album took the band's sound in a heavier, darker direction.