AVClub.com has a trenchant and piece of writing about the pop cultural context of Sports, the Huey Lewis and the News album which went to No. 1 for only one week in 1984 but managed to outsell everything but Michael Jackson’s Thriller that year. Here’s a sample:
“In order to appreciate Sports, you have to be able to misplace your snob instincts for 40 or so minutes. Otherwise, like Blender magazine in 2004, you might conclude that the record’s opening track, “The Heart Of Rock & Roll,” is among the worst songs ever written. There’s no denying that “The Heart Of Rock & Roll” is plenty trite, or that it sounds like an EPCOT version of rock music—all squawking harmonicas, Blues Brothers-style vocals, and more of that goddamn sax. But it doesn’t have a malicious bone in its body; “The Heart Of Rock & Roll” seeks to bring us all together, even you hip kids living in big cities on the coasts who think you’re too cool for Huey’s outré, old-fashioned corniness.
Unlike Bob Seger in “Old Time Rock And Roll”—a much better candidate for the worst songs of all-time list—Huey Lewis isn’t here to bury modern music in “The Heart Of Rock & Roll,” but to praise it, or at least to place it in the greater continuum of rock. Huey dutifully visits New York City and Los Angeles and has plenty of nice things to say about what he encounters in each city; he likes the “style” of New York punk and new-wave bands, and the “flash” of Sunset Strip glam metal groups. Ultimately, Huey concludes that rock ’n’ roll lives on because of these bands. Compared with Seger, Lewis is a progressive forward-thinker.” – The complete essay, with interesting vids of the time, is here.
– Thanks to Jason Josephes for the tip.
