Survivor’s 1982 classic “Eye Of The Tiger” is the newest member of an exclusive club.
The song just joined Spotify’s ‘Billions Club’, surpassing one billion streams.
A total of 419 songs are currently in the Billions Club – the most recent addition was Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)”. In May, the Beatles surpassed one billion streams on Spotify with “Here Comes the Sun.” The tune is the first Beatles song to do so.
“At first, we wondered if calling it ‘Eye Of The Tiger’ was too obvious,” explained Jim Peterik who co-wrote the song with Frankie Sullivan. “The initial draft of the song, we started with ‘It’s the eye of the tiger, it’s the thrill of the fight, rising up to the spirit of our rival, and the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night, and it all comes down to survival.’ We were going to call the song ‘Survival’.”
“In the rhyme scheme, you can tell we had set up ‘rival’ to rhyme with ‘survival’. At the end of the day, we said, ‘Are we nuts?’ That hook is so strong, and ‘rival’ doesn’t have to be a perfect rhyme with the word ‘tiger’. We made the right choice and went with ‘Eye Of The Tiger’.” Peterik said.
“Eye Of The Tiger” was nominated for two Grammy Awards, winning one for “Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group” in 1982. The song was also nominated for an Academy Award in 1982 for “Best Original Song”.