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"Lights" is a song recorded by American rock band Journey and written by Steve Perry and Neal Schon, released in 1978. It is also sometimes mistakenly called "City By The Bay" or "When the Lights Go Down in the City" due to its opening lyric.

Background and writing

The song is a ballad about Journey's city of origin, San Francisco. It was one of Steve Perry's first Journey songs, and was recorded soon after his joining the band. Although the song is about San Francisco, it was actually written in and originally intended to be about Los Angeles. In an interview, Perry said, "I had the song written in Los Angeles almost completely except for the bridge and it was written about Los Angeles. It was 'when the lights go down in the city and the sun shines on LA.' I didn't like the way it sounded at the time. And so I just had it sitting back in the corner. Then life changed my plans once again, and I was now facing joining Journey. I love San Francisco, the bay and the whole thing. 'The bay' fit so nice, 'When the lights go down in the city and the sun shines on the bay.' It was one of those early morning going across the bridge things when the sun was coming up and the lights were going down. It was perfect."

Although it was a single, it was not originally a hit, and became more popular over the years. It is now one of Journey's most popular and easily recognizable songs.

The song reached #68 on the US charts at the time.^[1]

Journey released a live version of the song in 1993 for the Time³ box set.

References