“Lights” by Journey

"Lights" comes off Journey's 1978 album Infinity, one of the first songs Steve Perry brought to the band after he joined, and he wrote it with Neal Schon. Perry had nearly finished it in Los Angeles, about Los Angeles, apart from the bridge, but didn't like how it sounded and shelved it. Once he was in Journey he reworked it into a love letter to San Francisco and the bay, inspired by early-morning drives across the bridge as the sun came up and the city lights went out.

Roy Thomas Baker produced it with Aynsley Dunbar, Gregg Rolie, Schon and Ross Valory, and mixed it with Geoff Workman engineering. It's a slow, silky ballad, Perry soaring over Rolie's keyboards, Valory's bass and Dunbar's easy drums. As a single it was a minor hit back then, stalling at number 68 on the Hot 100.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.