Tuesday July 26, 2022 “Come Sail Away” Styx
As we get into deeper waters with our nautical theme this week we have an invitation from Styx to come sail away.
I lived in a Chicago suburb for many years and when we first moved there from New York there were countless radio commercials for this local band that seemed to be everywhere every weekend. They played proms, high school dances, college campus parties, restaurant openings, bar mitzvahs, high school football game half times, Mary Kay cosmetic meetings, anything anywhere it seemed. They were called Styx and they grew their audiences from those seemingly humble beginnings into the largest arenas.
Most critics trashed Styx albums often dropping them into the cheesy pop group category but this was a talented band that delivered melodic, maybe dramatic, but memorable top ten tunes that you wished you were able to sing along with. Think about their catalog which includes “Lady”, “Blue Color Man”, “Babe”, “The Best of Times”, “Too Much Time on My Hands”, “Mr. Roboto”, “Show Me the Way” and so many others.
Styx had eight songs that hit the top 10 on the US Billboard Hot 100, as well as sixteen top 40 singles with seven of those eight top ten songs written by keyboard player/vocalist Dennis DeYoung. According to DeYoung he wrote “Babe” as a birthday present for his wife, to whom he has been married since 1970, never intending to release it as a single…a number one single.
Styx would record seventeen studio albums along with several compilations and live albums. A longstanding, oft-repeated claim in the music industry is that Styx was the first band to release four consecutive Triple-Platinum albums, signifying at least 3 million units of each sold.
Given those credentials, Styx is not a included in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame…but the Sex Pistols are.
Stay safe and well…and jump aboard with Styx and sing along, ‘come sail away…’