In 1972, The Doobie Brothers had their first Top 20 single, with “Listen To The Music”. Written by the band’s Tom Johnston, the song is on The Doobie Brothers’ sophomore Toulouse Street record.
A feel-good single, “Listen To The Music” says in part, “Oh, we’re gonna dance our blues away / And if I’m feelin’ good to you / And you’re feelin’ good to me / There ain’t nothin’ we can’t do or say / Feelin’ good, feeling fine / Oh, baby, let the music play / Oh, oh, listen to the music / Oh, oh, listen to the music / Oh, oh, listen to the music / All the time.”
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“It was all based around this somewhat Utopian view of the world,” Johnston tells Songfacts. “The idea was that music would lift man up to a higher plane. And that world leaders, if they were able to sit down on some big grassy knoll where the sun was shining and hear music—such as the type I was playing—would figure out that everybody had more in common than they had not in common.”
“And it was certainly not worth getting in such a bad state of affairs about,” he continues. “Everybody in the world would therefore benefit from this point of view. Just basically, that music would make everything better. And of course, I’ve since kind of realized it doesn’t work that way. “
The Success of “Listen To The Music” from The Doobie Brothers
When The Doobie Brothers released “Listen To The Music”, it came after their eponymous first album failed to have any hits on the radio. But at the time, bands like The Doobie Brothers felt far less pressure to immediately have success than in subsequent years.
“Any record company, of course, wants a hit,” Johnston reflects. “But nobody ever said to me specifically, ‘I want a hit, write one.’ … Those days, you could have a whole album that stiffed – which we did. The first one we did stiffed, and we didn’t have anything happen until the second album. And that was ‘Listen To The Music’.”
“That was the song that got everything going,” he adds. “But they believed in the band. And they believed that we would eventually come up with something that would happen, and stuck behind us, gave us some money to make the records. And consequently it all paid off.”
After “Listen To The Music”, The Doobie Brothers released “Jesus Is Just Alright”, which became a Top 40 single. Their first Top 10 came with “Long Train Runnin’,” The Doobie Brothers’ first single from their third studio album, The Captain And Me.
Photo by: Frank Carroll/NBC via Getty Images
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