Latest Release
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- JAN 12, 2024
- 1 Song
- Greatest Hits (Remastered) · 1985
- Sports (30th Anniversary Edition) · 1983
- Picture This · 1982
- Sports (30th Anniversary Edition) · 1983
- Greatest Hits (Remastered) · 1983
- Fore! · 1986
- Sports (30th Anniversary Edition) · 1983
- Fore! · 1986
- Greatest Hits (Remastered) · 1984
- Greatest Hits (Remastered) · 2000
Essential Albums
- “When I listen to the Sports record now, I realize it’s a record of its time,” Huey Lewis told Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig on an episode of Apple Music’s Time Crisis. “It’s a collection of singles—that’s what was going on. That’s the only way you could exist.” It is tempting to say that if you looked up 1983 in the dictionary, you would find the cover of Huey Lewis & The News’ third album Sports, but that doesn’t exactly track. (Why would a year be listed in the dictionary?) Yet the absolutely hit-laden album is such a precise time capsule of the moment when the ’80s became “the ’80s” that later generations may know it best as a ubiquitous American Psycho reference. Lewis’ proudly un-hip taste (“I come from R&B, my favorite singer’s Johnny Taylor,” he says) proved to be wise counter-programming coming out of the ’70s as a new form of radio-friendly rock was taking shape. For all the album’s beer-commercial trappings, right down to the sports-bar cover art, its architect was the thirtysomething son of first-wave Marin County hippies whose idea of counterculture rebellion was to start a band with a lead saxophonist. Lewis had been playing harmonica in the Bay Area band Clover for much of the ’70s—even on Thin Lizzy’s Live and Dangerous—and by the time he formed his own band, he knew how to play the game: “We’re recording in ’81, ’82—there’s only one avenue to success and that’s radio,” he says. “That’s where you had to be to exist. There was no other way of making a living in the music business. We aimed every song at radio and [made] each one different—one kind of R&B-ish, one kind of a rock tune, one kind of a ballad—because we didn’t know which one was going to hit or what.” With two-thirds of its tracklist essentially comprising a greatest-hits collection, Sports went on to sell some 10 million copies. Among those six hits were the shout-your-city’s-name-here opener “The Heart of Rock and Roll” and the winking “I Want a New Drug,” reveling in its retro regular-guy style at a moment when MTV-driven avant-garde electro-pop was in vogue. “We knew we needed a hit,” Lewis says. “We didn’t think we were going to have six of them.”
Albums
- 2010
- 1991
- 1988
Artist Playlists
- The man who made it hip to be square.
- Their roots in boogie and bar blues emerge on these album tracks.
Live Albums
- 2005
Radio Shows
- Huey Lewis shares music and stories from one of rock's most illustrious decades.
- Huey rocks out with George Stroumboulopoulos.
- Huey celebrates his 100th show with a wild theme.
- Huey plays his favorite guitar riffs, guitarists, and solos.
- Huey chats with comedian and friend Cousin Sal.
- Huey highlights his personal ’80s Essentials playlist.
- Huey talks with prolific producer Bob Clearmountain.
More To See
About Huey Lewis & The News
Even at the height of their popularity, Huey Lewis & The News projected a sense of down-to-earth fun that set them apart from the bigger-than-life pop stars who dominated the ’80s. Formed in 1979 from the ashes of Bay Area bands Soundhole and Clover (the latter of which famously backed up Elvis Costello on My Aim Is True), The News seemed like the kind of guys with whom you could knock back a pint at the pub. This quality was played up in both their cover art (as in the bar scene gracing 1983’s septuple-platinum Sports) and their music videos, which MTV aired constantly. But personality doesn’t make hit records; ace musicians do—and what made Lewis and crew such a commercial force was a talent for wrapping vintage rhythm ’n’ blues in a modern sound that, while not New Wave, reflected the genre’s punchy aesthetic. Signing with Chrysalis shortly after their formation, the crack unit rattled off one smash after another, including “I Want a New Drug,” “The Heart of Rock and Roll,” and “Heart and Soul.” By the middle of the decade, the group had leaned even harder into pure pop, producing the chart-topping “The Power of Love” (featured on the Back to the Future soundtrack) and “Hip to Be Square” (later immortalized in the edgy satire American Psycho). As the ’90s gave way to the ’00s, the band’s schedule slowed down, as Lewis, whose charisma is as on point as his harmonica playing, racked up a string of movie and television appearances. Still, they’ve continued to drop stellar sets like 2010’s Soulsville (a tribute to Stax) and 2020’s Weather, which find them embracing the gritty soulfulness that has always been at the core of their music. Since 2020, Lewis has hosted '80s Radio with Huey Lewis on Apple Music Hits.
- HOMETOWN
- New York, NY, United States
- BORN
- July 5, 1950
- GENRE
- Rock