Songoftheday 8/9/13 - New York, New York, is everything they say and no place that I'd rather be, where else can you do a half a million things all at a quarter to three...

Huey Lewis & The News - "The Heart Of Rock & Roll"
from the album Sports (1983)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #6 (four weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 14

Today's Song of the Day is by the biggest "bar-band" of the 80's Huey Lewis & The News, whose third album Sports had gotten off to a respectable start by spinning off two top ten pop singles with "Heart And Soul" and "I Want A New Drug". For their "hat trick" they went with the over-the-top niceness of "The Heart Of Rock & Roll", written by Lewis with guitar/sax man with the band Johnny Colla, and the advertising jingle for rock music struck a chord with the "squares" and made it the biggest hit from the album...

Only in a year like 1984 could "The Heart Of Rock & Roll" reach the top-5 on the rock radio chart, while being one of the three singles from the album that reached #6 on the chart. The record also was nominated for Record of the Year at the 1985 Grammys (really?). It did manage to make the top-40 in New Zealand, but the musical jingoistic nature of the song I guess put off other markets, In Britain it petered out at first at #78, to be rereleased a year later to peak under the top-40 at #49.

I guess I never was a big fan of the song lyrically because it's "product" nature, but you gotta hand it to their musicianship and Huey trying his best to "sell" it. As such, it's really a time capsule of the time and the band, as it doesn't really lend well to cover versions.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)




...and here's the band in 1985 live in concert...

Up tomorrow: A big-voiced singer just can't help herself with recording Italian pop songs.