The 1980s File Feature
This Is The Time
This Is The Time — Dennis DeYoung's Statement of Solo IntentBy the summer of 1986, the world was watching to see whether Dennis DeYoung could survive outside…
01 The Story
This Is The Time — Dennis DeYoung's Statement of Solo Intent
By the summer of 1986, the world was watching to see whether Dennis DeYoung could survive outside the band that had made him a household name. Styx had been one of the defining arena rock acts of the late 1970s and early 1980s: Come Sail Away, Mr. Roboto, Babe had given them a catalog that stretched from stadium rock to theatrical pop to ambitious concept albums. A falling-out with guitarist Tommy Shaw had essentially paused the band, and DeYoung was testing himself as a solo artist. This Is The Time was that test made audible.
The Architecture of a Career Transition
Dennis DeYoung had always been Styx's romantic center: the voice behind their most unabashedly sentimental recordings, the member least interested in rock credibility and most committed to the emotional directness of a good pop melody. Going solo allowed him to pursue that instinct without the internal negotiations that any band requires. This Is The Time arrived on his solo debut Desert Moon, a record designed to confirm that his talent was not inseparable from his bandmates. The title single from that album, Desert Moon, had already reached the top 10, and DeYoung was riding genuine commercial momentum when this follow-up was released.
The Sound of the Record
The production on This Is The Time is firmly mid-1980s arena pop: big keyboards, polished reverb, the kind of arrangement that fills stadium-sized spaces without breaking a sweat. DeYoung's voice, one of the more technically accomplished in the rock mainstream of the era, is centered and confident throughout. The song is built as a ballad with ambitions of something grander; the chorus reaches for the kind of communal feeling that defined Styx at their peak, the sense that everyone in the building was experiencing something together. For a solo album, it was a bold and generous emotional offering, the kind of record that refuses to downsize its feelings simply because the band is no longer behind it.
Chart Position and Its Context
This Is The Time debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on June 28, 1986, entering at 97 and rising to peak at number 93 on July 5, 1986. The song spent 3 weeks on the chart before falling off. That modest run placed it firmly in the lower reaches of the Hot 100, far below the peaks his Styx recordings had regularly achieved. The summer of 1986 was an intensely competitive pop environment, crowded with strong material from established acts and emerging voices, and a straightforward arena ballad from a solo transitional artist faced real headwinds. The chart position does not diminish the record, but it does place it accurately within the commercial context of its moment, when DeYoung was still establishing his individual identity for audiences who knew him primarily as a member of a band.
DeYoung's Solo Identity
What the chart figures don't capture is the quality of the performance. DeYoung committed fully to the emotional register the song required, and the record rewards attentive listening. His willingness to be sincere without irony, in a musical climate that was increasingly rewarding cooler surfaces, was a consistent quality of his solo work. DeYoung remained one of rock's most unashamed romantics, and This Is The Time is a clean illustration of that particular artistic identity, delivered with the same conviction he had always brought to his best work with Styx. In a genre where sincerity was increasingly treated as a liability, that stubbornness was both his greatest asset and the quality that made commercial breakthroughs harder to come by.
A Bookmark in Time
For fans who grew up with Styx, This Is The Time carries the bittersweet quality of a familiar voice in an unfamiliar context. Press play and hear a skilled craftsman making the argument that his talent extended beyond any single collaboration, doing it with a melody that deserved more than the chart ultimately gave it, and more than most listeners took time to notice.
“This Is The Time” — Dennis DeYoung's singular moment on the 1980s charts.
02 Song Meaning
This Is The Time — What Dennis DeYoung Was Really Asking For
Dennis DeYoung built his career on a specific emotional frequency: the direct appeal to feeling, the unguarded moment, the belief that a pop song's purpose is to make its listener feel something uncomplicated and real. This Is The Time is a concentrated expression of that philosophy, a song that asks you to be present for what matters before the chance passes.
The Urgency of the Present Moment
The lyric's central concern is time: specifically, the danger of letting significant moments pass unrecognized. The title itself is an imperative reframed as observation, pointing at the present with deliberate emphasis. DeYoung's narrator is urging someone, and implicitly the listener, to stop treating the present as a rehearsal for a future that may never arrive. The emotional argument is essentially carpe diem, dressed in the language of personal relationship rather than philosophy, which is what makes it accessible without feeling trivial.
Love as the Frame for Urgency
The song situates its philosophical content within a love relationship, which is a classically effective pop strategy: universal ideas land harder when they are attached to specific human stakes. The narrator is not talking about life in the abstract; he is talking about this person, this relationship, this particular window of connection that is open now and may not remain so. That concreteness gives the lyric its emotional grip and makes the urgency feel earned rather than manufactured.
DeYoung's Romantic Vision
Throughout his time with Styx and into his solo work, DeYoung maintained a vision of romantic love as something fundamentally redemptive, a force capable of providing meaning and stability in a chaotic world. This Is The Time participates in that vision without interrogating it, which is both a limitation and a deliberate artistic choice. The song is not interested in complexity; it is interested in commitment. That clarity is its strength.
Arena Rock and Emotional Scale
The production aesthetic DeYoung brought to his solo work came directly from his Styx years, and it shaped the emotional scale of everything he recorded. Arena rock as a genre had always been about amplification, not just of sound but of feeling: the goal was to make private emotions feel public and communal, to create the sensation of shared experience. This Is The Time attempts that enlargement of scale even in a solo context, asking the listener to feel the moment's importance as though in a room of thousands rather than alone at a radio.
The Song's Quiet Persistence
Despite its modest chart performance, This Is The Time has maintained a small but devoted audience among fans of 1980s arena pop and Styx devotees who followed DeYoung's solo career with loyalty. Its emotional directness, which worked against it in a chart environment that often rewarded cooler surfaces, is precisely what gives the song its staying power among listeners who were ready to receive it on its own terms.
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