Jimi Jamison, lead singer of the Chicago rock band Survivor, passed away on August 31 after suffering a heart attack. He was 63 years old. In honor of Jimi’s life and work, I’d like to take a moment to celebrate his band’s unique and epic contributions to the fight world. Survivor, you see, were the kings of the eighties fight film soundtrack. Their popular and populist arena rock sound, complete with guileless, fist-pumping choruses and earnest lyrics about finding inner strength and power, made them the perfect choice for any director or star looking for a theme song for his film about a boxing or karate underdog.
And man, did they deliver when they were asked to write a song for such a flick. They came up with “Eye of the Tiger,” one of the most successful singles of all time, for Rocky III. They followed that up with “The Moment of Truth” for the Karate Kid. And then they revisited the Rocky series with the slightly less iconic—but no less anthemic—“Burning Heart.”
Let’s take a closer look at each of those songs: “Eye of the Tiger” 1982 Rocky III Sylvester Stallone enlisted Survivor to write a song for Rocky III because he was a fan of some of their previous tunes like “Poor Man’s Son” and “Take You On A Saturday,” and he wanted a theme song for the third Rocky film that had a similar “street” sound (because apparently “street” meant something very different to white people in the early eighties).
Tiger Eyes and Burning Hearts: The Fight Anthems of Survivor
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