Poor Man's Son by Survivor

Album: Premonition (1981)

Charted: 33

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Songfacts®:

This song was Survivor's first Top 40 hit, and one that had an enormous impact on the band thanks to one specific listener: Sylvester Stallone. When Stallone was looking for a theme song to his movie Rocky III, Survivor's label head Tony Scotti played him this track, which was on the band's first album. Stallone heard the sound he was looking for in this song, and approached Survivor to make a song with a similar sound, thus setting the stage for "Eye Of The Tiger."
The Survivor songwriting tandem of Jim Peterik and Frankie Sullivan wrote this track. "That's the sound I want for my movie's title song," Sylvester Stallone told them. "It's raw, it's street. It's got energy and it's got exactly what I need."
Jim Peterik wrote the lyric to this song. Many of his compositions draw from personal experience, but not this one - he grew up in a stable, middle-class family. In our interview with Peterik, he explained: "I'm very title-driven, and I love the sound of that: 'Poor Man's Son' - the title really drove the song. Sometimes it just takes that to put yourself into that mindset."

Comments: 1

Patrick Longworth from Okanagan Falls, British Columbia, CanadaPoor Man's Son is one of their most creative songs and I appreciate it because I am a son, though my dad was not at all poor when I came into the world. He was middle class and I came into the world after the family had built up their life in Canada after emigrating from England. I, on the other hand, have become a "poor man" due to the unfaithfulness of many coworkers and my own poor saving and spending habits.

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