About The Song
“It’s a Jungle Out There” sits at a very specific point in the Three Dog Night timeline: it’s the lead track and the featured single from their 1983 EP It’s a Jungle, released after the band’s classic hit era had ended and the group had reunited in 1981. Instead of trying to recreate the exact 1970–72 sound, this release leaned into the early-’80s moment they were living in—when radio playlists were shifting, MTV mattered, and legacy bands often had to reintroduce themselves from the ground up.
The EP was issued on the small Passport Records label and is generally dated to May 1983, with producer Richard Podolor back in the chair. Trade and chart listings from the period treated it like a real “new Three Dog Night record,” not a compilation or contract filler: Billboard’s July 30, 1983 issue listed It’s a Jungle among new EP releases (Passport PB 5001), and industry press that fall described it as the band’s first album in roughly eight years. In total it runs about sixteen minutes, built as five concise tracks rather than a full LP statement.
For “It’s a Jungle Out There,” the writing credit goes to Bill Moloney, Paul Pilger, and Dennis Polen. That trio isn’t a household songwriting “brand” in the way Three Dog Night fans associate with Randy Newman or Paul Williams, but the credit tells you what the band was doing here: going back to their roots as interpreters and selectors, choosing contemporary material that fit the voices. Release notes and discographies commonly flag Cory Wells as the featured lead vocal on the track, which fits the band’s long-standing habit of assigning songs to whichever of the three frontmen could make the lyric land most naturally.
The lyric idea is straightforward and built for radio: the world is dressed up as “civilization,” but it feels like a jungle—full of temptation, mixed signals, and the sense that you have to stay alert. That theme didn’t need a complex storyline; it simply matched the early-’80s mood of guarded optimism and streetwise caution. And in broader descriptions of this reunion-era recording, the group’s own history page has even labeled It’s a Jungle as “ska-inspired,” a small clue that they were listening to what was moving on the “new wave” edge of rock rather than strictly replaying their earlier AM-radio blueprint.
Commercially, it didn’t behave like a comeback single from a former Top 40 powerhouse, but it did leave fingerprints. The EP reached No. 210 on the Billboard 200, and the single “It’s a Jungle Out There” showed up on Radio & Records’ AOR Hot Tracks at No. 65 in 1983. That combination—low Billboard placement but measurable rock-radio traction—pretty much captures what this era was for them: more about being heard again than dominating the national pop charts.
They also played the MTV game. A music video was made for “It’s a Jungle Out There,” and while accounts differ on the “meaning,” the basic storyline is consistent in write-ups: a woman in a bar-like “watering hole” draws attention from the band’s lead singers and other men, then repeatedly disappears mid-date, leaving the pursuers confused and embarrassed before the video ends with her back in the same spot, untouched and in control. The same source notes the clip was released on the Stet recording label and even received graded screenplay mentions in Cash Box-era trade documentation—exactly the kind of behind-the-scenes trivia that only appears once a band is competing in a video-first marketplace.
One last side-thread makes the title a little more interesting: “It’s a Jungle Out There” wasn’t exclusive to Three Dog Night. The same songwriting trio is credited for a track with the same title on Bonnie Tyler’s 1983 album Faster Than the Speed of Night, suggesting the song circulated through the same early-’80s writer/publisher lanes that fed multiple rock and pop acts at once. In that sense, Three Dog Night’s version isn’t just “a late-career single”—it’s a snapshot of how they tried to plug their signature voices into the contemporary song ecosystem of 1983.
Video
Lyric
I hear they call it civilization
It’s a jungle out there
Ooh, jungle out there
The empty nights of temptation
Jungle out there
Ooh, you just don’t care
Each night you dress up to kill them
Down at the watering hole
You stalk your prey with high fashion
With self-control
You play the role, yeah
Lonely and the lonely heart hunter
Single scene life
Ooh, it cuts like a knife
I hear you call it civilization
It’s a jungle out there
Ooh, jungle out there
Climb through the crowd each night
You set your trap so carefully
Add trophy to your wall
Hey, someone has you in their sights
You are both the hunter and the prey
No winner at all, oh
Ten thousand shadows surround you
You swing from vine to vine
Below the nightmare it gathers
It’s like a jungle
At feeding time, yeah
Climb through the crowd each night
You set your trap so carefully
Add trophy to your wall
Hey, someone has you in their sights
You are both the hunter and the prey
No winner at all
You call it civilization
It’s a jungle out there
Ooh, jungle out there
(Civilization)
Ten thousand shadows surround you
Jungle out there
(Civilization)
Whoa, whoa
Jungle out there
(Civilization)
You call it civilization
It’s a jungle out there
Ooh, jungle out there
(Civilization)
The lonely nights of temptation
It’s a jungle out there
Ooh, jungle out there
(Civilization)