In 1982, Survivor had their first No. 1 single with “Eye Of The Tiger”, but they owe their biggest hit to Queen’s 1980 hit single, “Another One Bites The Dust”.
The song was written for Rocky III and has become synonymous not just with the franchise but with sporting achievements in general.
Stallone himself personally reached out to Jim Peterik and Frankie Sullivan, asking them to write something for the third film in the Rocky franchise. According to The Guardian, Stallone told the band, “I want something for the kids. Something street, something with a pulse. Can you help me out?”
When the musicians initially saw the film, the Queen track was being used as a placeholder.
“When we got the initial rough cut of the movie, the scene that ‘Eye Of The Tiger’ appears in was cut to ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ by Queen,” Peterik explained per American Songwriter. “Frankie and I are watching this. The punches are being thrown, and we’re going, ‘Holy c—, this is working like a charm.'”
How Survivor Tried To Make A Song In The Spirit Of Queen Classic
But Queen would not give Stallone and the movie publishing rights to their classic song. Which is why Survivor had to step in and make an anthemic song for that iconic movie moment. The band were inspired by Queen and wanted to make a track in the spirit of “Another One Bites The Dust.”
“Frankie and I looked at each other and went, ‘Man, this is going to be tough to beat,'” Peterik recalled. “We had the spirit of, ‘We’ve got to try to top this.’ I started doing that now-famous dead string guitar riff and started slashing those chords to the punches we saw on the screen, and the whole song took shape in the next three days.”
How ‘Eye Of The Tiger’ Was Written
Peterik credits Sullivan with writing the lines that helped flesh out the entire song.
“Frankie came in with the lines, ‘Back on the street, doin’ time, taking chances,” Peterik explained. “I loved those lines immediately, and suggested, ‘Rising up, back on the street, did my time, took my chances,’ to make it fit with the storyline. And to make the rhythm of the words fit the music I was hearing in my head. That was certainly the lyrical spark that got the song started.”
He added that they completed most of the song in the same day. “At the end of the day, the music was about 80 percent complete. And the lyric about 30 percent,” Peterik says.
“Over the next few days, I worked hard on the lyrics, remembering pieces of movie dialogue like, ‘Went the distance,’ referring to the central phrase of the first Rocky movie,” he explained.
This story was originally published by Parade on Jul 7, 2026, where it first appeared in the Entertainment section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.