South Detroit enthusiasts Journey to perform at Lions-49ers game

After putting the mythical South Detroit on the map, Journey will perform at halftime of the Lions-49ers game on Sunday, 49ers officials announced Friday.

That puts the Bay Area rock group in a bit of a tight spot in front of their hometown crowd: to perform the "South Detroit" line in "Don't Stop Believin'," or to skip it? Only time will tell.

The classic rockers have plenty of other fan favorites to pull from: "Any Way You Want It," "Separate Ways," "Open Arms" or "Faithfully," just to name a few.

But "Dont' Stop Believin'" is far and away the group's biggest song; it has more than 1.7 billion plays on Spotify, where the band's next closest song, "Any Way You Want It," has 398 million streams on the service.

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Amp Squad DJs and Nate Smith will also perform at Sunday's NFC Championship game, and "Despacito" singer Luis Fonsi will do National Anthem honors. Kickoff is at 6:30 p.m. and the game will air on Fox.

Journey — the group is fronted by singer Arnel Pineda, along with original guitarist Neil Schon and longtime keyboard player Jonathan Cain — is due at Comerica Park on July 18, on a bill that also includes Def Leppard. Steve Miller Band will perform warmup duties for the co-headliners.

As for that "South Detroit" line in "Don't Stop Believin'," songwriter Steve Perry told New York Magazine's Vulture in 2012 that when he was writing the song, "I ran the phonetics of east, west, and north, but nothing sounded as good or emotionally true to me as South Detroit," he said. "The syntax just sounded right. I fell in love with the line. It's only been in the last few years that I've learned that there is no South Detroit. But it doesn't matter."

agraham@detroitnews.com