Songfacts®:

• In a Songfacts interview with Night Ranger lead singer Jack Blades, he told the story behind this song: "'Sentimental Street' is one of my favorite songs that I've ever come up with. In 1975 I moved up to San Francisco, and there's this area out there called the Avenues. When you're driving to the airport in San Francisco, you drive through Golden Gate Park on the way, and then you hit the Avenues. And what they are, they're streets, there's Juda, Kirkham, all these streets that are all alphabetical, but then they cross to like 45th Avenue, 35th Avenue, the Avenues. So I always thought when I was driving there, Wouldn't it be fun to walk down the street, just thinking about life and stuff like that, and have a street called Sentimental Street, where you could walk down that street in your life and just talk about your life. And then I thought about it when I was driving in San Francisco one day, I was like, 'Sentimental Street in the Avenues.' Wouldn't that be fun if that name, Sentimental Street, was one of the names in the Avenues, along with Juda, Kirkham – Sentimental. So that's kind of where the title 'Sentimental Street' in the Avenues came about."
• Night Ranger had a huge hit on their previous album with the ballad "Sister Christian," so their label was thrilled when they delivered Seven Wishes with "Sentimental Street," which while not quite a ballad, is one of their more easygoing songs and is rife with nostalgia. It was also a big hit and kept them on pop radio.
• Jack Blades wrote this song, but drummer Kelly Keagy, who also sang "Sister Christian," handled the lead vocal.