Songoftheday 2/9/15 - I used to be a renegade I used to fool around, but I couldn't take the punishment and had to settle down...

"Hip To Be Square" - Huey Lewis & The News
from the album Fore! (1986)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #3 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 12

Today's Song of the Day comes from the pop/rock band Huey Lewis & The News, who had scored their second #1 hit in the fall of 1986 with "Stuck With You", the first single from their fourth album Fore!. For its follow-up they amped up the speed for the perfect synopsis of the Reagan years, "Hip To Be Square". Written by Lewis along with band keyboardist Sean Hopper and drummer Bill Gibson, the ode to not being edgy included backup vocals from football players Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott....

"Hip To Be Square" became the second top-10 hit from the Fore! album in December of 1986, while landing the group their third #1 Mainstream Rock single after "Heart & Soul" and "The Power Of Love". The record also crossed over to the easy-listening chart, peaking at #20. Internationally, the track made the top-10 in New Zealand, top-20 in Australia, and just missed the top-40 in England by one notch at #41.

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Here's Huey and the News live on tour in England in 1987...

Of course most people from the next generation would know the song primarily from its creepily hilarious use in the movie American Psycho in 2000....

Finally, here's the band live in 2003...

Up tomorrow: A punk rocker travels back to 1968 to revive a soul nugget.