If you need a song for motivation this is it! For our Nothing But Love Weekend I was looking up movie love clips and Rocky III popped up. Made me think of Survivor. "Eye of the Tiger" is the theme song to it which was the biggest movie of 1982. According to Billboard it was also the number one song of that year.
Tony Scotti was the president of Survivor's record label and he played Sylvester Stallone some tracks from their previous album, "Premonition." Stallone thought everything from the sound to the writing style to the street appeal could fit in his new movie. He called Jim Peterik and Frankie Sullivan who were Survivor's songwriters and left messages on their answering machines. Peterik said, "Answering machines were still something of a novelty back then and to see that blinking light was a thrill. When I pressed the playback button I heard, 'Hey, yo, Jim, that's a nice message you got there. This is Sylvester Stallone.' It was too thick to be really him, but it was him. That's really the way he talks."
Sylvester Stallone told the group "Eye of the Tiger" was exactly what he was looking for but requested a modified mix with louder drums and a new third verse instead of repeating the first. The group did exactly what Stallone suggested. Jim Peterik said, "Stallone has a good ear for a hook. Just listen to his dialogues - he wrote those scripts. He came up with 'Eye Of The Tiger' for that script and those hook phrases like 'I'm going to knock you into tomorrow.' All that stuff is Stallone, he's a genius with dialogue. Songs are nothing more than dialogue set to music as far as I'm concerned."