Huey Lewis and the News are releasing a new album, Weather, this Friday. And given the sudden hearing loss Lewis has suffered in the last couple years -- there was an excellent recent Esquire profile all about it -- it seems possible that his long career in music is coming to an end. As a child of the '80s, I'll always had a soft spot for Huey Lewis, and wanted to take a look back at his catalog beyond the singles.

Huey Lewis and the News deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Stop Trying
2. Don't Make Me Do It
3. I Want You
4. Trouble In Paradise
5. If You Really Love Me You'll Let Me
6. Change Of Heart
7. Tattoo (Giving It All Up For Love)
8. The Only One
9. What Happened To True Love
10. Is It Me
11. You Crack Me Up
12. Finally Found A Home
13. Bad Is Bad
14. Honky Tonk Blues
15. Whole Lotta Lovin'
16. Forest For The Trees
17. Simple As That
18. I Never Walk Alone
19. Naturally
20. Old Antone's
21. Bobo Tempo
22. Don't Look Back

Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 from Huey Lewis and the News (1980)
Tracks 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 from Picture This (1982)
Tracks 11, 12, 13 and 14 from Sports (1983)
Tracks 15, 16, 17 and 18 from Fore! (1986)
Tracks 19 and 20 from Small World (1988)
Track 21 from Hard At Play (1991)

It was probably never easy to discuss the charms of Huey Lewis's music with any sincerity or affection, but it's a lot harder since the 1991 novel American Psycho and the 1999 film adaptation. Patrick Bateman's murderous insanity is undercut by the banality of his earnest soliloquy about the artistic merits of '80s hitmakers including Phil Collins and Huey Lewis. It's hard to tell if the more questionable lines in Bateman's verbose rock critic monologue are supposed to ring false (he thinks Huey Lewis has "a far more bitter, cynical sense of humor" than Elvis Costello, which is about as accurate as saying he's taller than Manute Bol). But the fact that this ridiculous character eloquently describes Huey Lewis's songs as a timely ode to "the pleasures of conformity" has kind of helped vacuum seal Lewis as more of a campy vestige of the '80s than one of the decade's most ubiquitous pop stars, at one point probably as recognizable as Prince or Bruce Springsteen. And it can be kind of stifling and annoying to me, as someone who thinks we should be able to talk about the most uncool corners of popular music without devolving into instant mockery and dismissal.

I was always amused that Patrick Bateman's spiel about Huey Lewis and the News included an aside that "their early work was a little too New Wave for my taste," because before I'd seen American Psycho, I had picked up a bargain bin LP of their 1980 self-titled debut and really dug it, as a teenager who was obsessed with new wave. Their flop single "Some Of My Lies Are True (Sooner Or Later)" is a classic to me, and most of the album is just as good. It's a little faster and snappier than their more famous later material, although "Trouble In Paradise" certainly sounds like it could've been on Sports. They particularly race through "If You Really Love Me You'll Let Me," which is under 2 minutes long and features one of my favorite Huey harmonica performances.

With all due respect to their mid-'80s blockbusters, Huey Lewis and the News is really my favorite album by the group, and the only almost entirely written by Lewis and his band (although the one they didn't write, "I Want You," is aces). As time went on, they recorded more songs by outside writers, and about half of their biggest hits were written by other people, although I feel like it all blended in pretty well with the songwriting of Lewis and his bandmates. Sports is a pretty damn good record, though, certainly the only multi-platinum '80s pop phenomenon that had a cover of "Honky Tonk Blues" by Hank Williams. There are so songs from the Sports/Fore! era that I included the minor rock radio hit "Finally Found A Home" and the UK-only single "Simple As That."

Huey Lewis had a pretty interesting career prior to pop stardom. His first band, Clover, relocated to the UK, where the other members of the band backed Elvis Costello on My Aim Is True. "Bluesy Huey Lewis" hooked up with Thin Lizzy and played harmonica on their classic Live And Dangerous concert album as well as both of Phil Lynott's solo albums. One of the Lynott songs Lewis played on, "Tattoo (Giving It All Up For Love)," was covered on the News's second album Picture This, and there's an endearing note in the Esquire profile that Lewis currently has a picture of himself with Lynott proudly displayed on his kitchen counter.

Obviously nothing after Fore! has really been remembered, but I like "Bobo Tempo," what a weird song. I ended things at 1991's Hard At Play, since 2 of the 3 albums The News have released since then aren't on Spotify, but certainly "Don't Look Back" (which has a nice Steely Dan namecheck) is a good place to end, right at the edge of the band's fade from commercial relevance, their last album to spin off any Top 40 hits.

One of the interesting things about Huey Lewis that the Esquire piece touches on is that his mother was a Deadhead who married a famous beat poet, and that his interest in blues and R&B was kind of his way of rebelling against the northern California hippie culture he grew up around. That really puts a different light on the way Huey Lewis became this business casual rock star with short hair, ties and suit jackets, which brings to mind what I wrote last year when Eddie Money passed away. It certainly gives some context to "Hip To Be Square," even if Lewis says he regrets that the song's intended irony didn't really come across to people.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 09, 2020 at 7:40 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.