Tomorrow Doesn't Matter Tonight

Tomorrow Doesn't Matter Tonight: Starship and the Art of the Power Ballad

In the spring of 1986, Starship was sitting at the very top of American pop music in a way that would have seemed improbable a decade earlier to anyone familiar with the group's origins. Jefferson Starship, and before that Jefferson Airplane, had been touchstones of San Francisco psychedelia and counterculture consciousness in the late 1960s: serious, politically engaged, musically adventurous. By 1986, the band that had emerged from that history, now operating simply as Starship, was making gleaming, synthesizer-driven power pop that competed comfortably with the most commercially polished records on the chart. Tomorrow Doesn't Matter Tonight was part of that commercial peak.

From the Airplane to the Starship

The transformation of Jefferson Airplane into Jefferson Starship and then into Starship was one of rock's more dramatic mutations: a gradual process of personnel changes, stylistic evolution, and market repositioning that spanned nearly two decades. By the time the group reached 1986, the connection to the original Airplane was largely historical rather than musical. Grace Slick remained as the most visible link to the earlier period, her voice one of rock's most distinctive instruments, now deployed in a very different sonic context from the psychedelic explorations of Surrealistic Pillow. The 1985-1986 period represented the commercial peak of the Starship incarnation: We Built This City had reached number one in 1985, and the group's Knee Deep in the Hoopla album was a genuine mainstream success.

The Sound of the Era

Tomorrow Doesn't Matter Tonight fit precisely into the sonic landscape that defined mid-1980s album rock: synthesizers providing warmth and atmosphere, guitar providing edge and momentum, a production style that valued clarity and commercial impact over rawness or experimental risk. The record had the particular sheen that characterized the decade's most successful rock productions, a quality that later listeners would find either appealing or off-putting depending on their relationship to 1980s aesthetics but that was entirely appropriate to its moment. Grace Slick's vocal performance centered the track with the authority of an artist who had been making significant records for twenty years.

Climbing the Chart in Thirteen Weeks

The single entered the Billboard Hot 100 on April 5, 1986 at number 71 and worked its way steadily upward through the spring and into summer. It peaked at number 26 on May 24, 1986, representing a 13-week chart run that confirmed it as one of the more sustained performers of that chart cycle. That durability reflected genuine radio support and real consumer purchase activity rather than a brief burst of promotional intensity, suggesting a record that wore well with repeated exposure.

The Power Ballad as 1986 Currency

The mid-1980s power ballad was one of popular music's most commercially reliable forms: a song structured around a slow-to-mid tempo, a lyric dealing with love and connection, a production that built gradually toward an emotionally forceful chorus, and a vocal performance capable of delivering the climax with genuine impact. Starship were among the most competent practitioners of this form in their peak commercial period, and Tomorrow Doesn't Matter Tonight demonstrates that competence fully. The song delivered exactly what its format promised, with professional efficiency and real melodic appeal.

A Snapshot of the Commercial Peak

Looking back at this moment in Starship's history, what is striking is the complete conviction of the commitment to the mainstream. There is no hedging, no ironic distance, no nostalgia for the more artistically ambitious earlier phases of the band's history. The records were made with total seriousness about their commercial purpose, and that seriousness produced genuinely effective popular music. Press play and hear an era at full confidence in its own sound.

“Tomorrow Doesn't Matter Tonight” — Starship's singular moment on the 1980s charts.