Songfacts®:

• "Somebody's Out There" is Triumph's highest-charting single in America, although they're better known for "Lay It On The Line " and "Hold On." Their lead singer, Rik Emmett, wrote the lyric, which he told Songfacts came after hearing a similar tune on the radio. He kept repeating words like "somebody," "somehow," "some way," and "someone" over and over in his head until he came up with the chorus. The idea is that someone is out there waiting for you (a love interest, perhaps); you just have to find her.
• This was the lead single from Triumph's eighth studio album, The Sport of Kings, which came at a time of dissent within the band. Rik Emmett says "Somebody's Out There" was a last-minute addition to the album; after the band thought it was finished, the A&R person at the record label wasn't entirely happy because he couldn't hear a radio single. Within a week, Emmett wrote the song, the band learned it, they went to the studio, cut the bed, and recorded it for the album.
  
  The A&R got his way, but the fractures that formed in the band got even wider. Emmett left after their next album, and after one album without him in 1993, they called it quits.
• While Triumph is frequently referred to as heavy metal, the group shuns this label, preferring the tag progressive rock. They also bear a striking resemblance to fellow Canadian prog-rockers Rush, only without the Randroid overtones.
• Triumph played at the second US Festival, the one held on Memorial Day weekend, 1983. Steve Wozniak (of Apple computer fame), who financed the festival (and lost $20 million on it), was reportedly a huge fan of Triumph and invited them specifically. Here are some reflections from lead singer Rik Emmett on the US Festival from the book MTV Ruled the World - The Early Years of Music Video: "My personal memory of that day is that it was extremely hot. It was somewhere between 90 and 100 degrees. And the air quality was really poor. All the smog from LA had blown up and got trapped against the mountains. You ran up and down the stage a few times... and then you wondered why your lungs felt as if you'd been in some opium den or something. But we made it through. That particular performance has become one that is the legacy of the act. It was just one show on one day, but it was an extraordinary day."