When a band that has gained popularity in one decade tries to make the jump to the next one, they can easily stumble. Musical tastes change quickly. You can’t expect artists to just glide across the calendar milestones without fading. Huey Lewis And The News are often cited as the quintessential 80s band. But Lewis and company found a way to stretch their big-time success into the 90s. Their last US Top 40 hit arrived in 1991. It came when he collaborated with a guy who knew a thing or two about what worked on radio, and who had a fascinating connection to the band’s early days.
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Huey Lewis and the News delivered one of the coolest success stories of any American band in the 80s. They had been kicking around in various incarnations throughout the 70s trying to find a niche. Members of the San Francisco-based band even did a short stint in England, where, as Clover, they backed up Elvis Costello on his first album.
When they finally scored a record deal of their own, they had morphed into Huey Lewis And The News. Lewis served as the soulful lead vocalist and affable frontman. Meanwhile, The News flashed chops that allowed them to take on material that skewed toward R&B as much as it did rock.
The band’s first album didn’t do much. With their backs against the wall, they chose “Do You Believe In Love” as their first single from their 1981 album Picture This. It was a song that had been released by a band named Supercharge a few years earlier. (Keep them in mind as we progress in this story.) With The News offering New Wave tightness, and Lewis bringing the vocal emotion, the song rolled to the Top 10. And it opened the floodgates for their success.
80s Superstars
The next two albums by Huey Lewis And The News set the bar high for 80s commercial success among American bands. Sports, released in 1983, spun out four Top 10 singles. Fore!, from 1986, did even better with five in the Top 10, including a pair of no. 1 hits. In between, the band added another no. 1 with “The Power Of Love” from the Back To The Future soundtrack.
Needless to say, they couldn’t sustain this pace. But the fact that Lewis and his band stuck to their R&B-based guns and didn’t chase trends helped them to stay relevant. Their 1988 album Small World, released in an era where hair metal was ruling the roost, still went platinum.
Which brings us to the 90s, in particular, the 1991 album Hard At Play. Lewis and his band rocked harder than they had in years on this one. The first single, “Couple Days Off”, put them right back on the cusp of the Top 10. Its follow-up single would prove to be the final Top 40 hit for The News.
Help from an Old Friend
Remember when we told you earlier to take note of the band Supercharge. Well, their lead singer was none other than Mutt Lange. He wrote “Do You Believe In Love”, and would go on to become one of the most successful producers of the next few decades.
“It Hit Me Like A Hammer”, the second single off Hard At Play, was a co-write between Lewis and Lange. In other words, it served as a kind of full-circle moment. The song, featuring Lange’s exclamatory writing touches and Huey’s powerhouse vocals, worked its way to no. 21 in 1991.
Lewis and company came close to the Top 40 with a couple of singles in 1994, but they came up just short. That means that The News’ elite chart success started and ended with a little Mutt magic to help them out.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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