By 1981 the band had the formula and the singer, and Escape is the sound of both clicking at once. It is the high-water mark: the only Journey album to reach No. 1, the record that turned a respected touring act into a fixture of American radio. Nearly every corner of it became a single, and several of those singles became the songs people still mean when they say the band’s name.

What makes Escape land is restraint dressed as bombast. The hooks are enormous, but they are also patient, built to arrive rather than to announce. The album opens on a track that everyone now knows by heart and almost no one knows the workings of, a song carrying more quiet sleight-of-hand than its sing-along reputation lets on. Forty years on, Escape is still doing what arena rock rarely manages: it sounds like a sure thing, and it is hiding more than it shows.