No Guilty Pleasure

I have pretty strong feelings about Huey Lewis & the News.

To the uninitiated, for a two album stretch from late 1983 through 1987, they were the biggest rock band in the world. If I were to predict just one song you might know among their many hits, I’d pick “The Power of Love” because it was featured in the popular 1985 movie Back to the Future.

To those in the know, you might be tempted, perhaps fairly, to guess that what follows will be an ironic appreciation of the band. You would be wrong. That’s not my style. I genuinely like this band, and taking it further, I respect the hell out of them. Let’s also be clear that they are not a guilty pleasure. I reject the concept. Guilty pleasures are reserved for young people who haven’t yet accumulated sufficient life experience to feel legitimately guilty. I’ve been around long enough to carry more than my share of guilt and shame based on actual life decisions. I have no emotional space left to feel guilty about enjoying a pop song.

Admittedly, not all of the band’s hits actually hit the mark in terms of being great songs. Mixed in with the rockin’ pop gems I love, like “Heart & Soul” or “I Want a New Drug,” are some silly tracks I routinely skip. The title of the song “Hip to Be Square” pretty much says it all in that category, for example. And speaking broadly, there is just too much saxophone on their stuff for my liking.

Putting all that aside, the fact of the matter is that Huey Lewis & the News is an extremely tight band. Not 1990s-style tight as in really great or cool—though a case could be made there as well—but musicianship-tight, as in locked in, in the pocket, or in sync.

In musician speak 'tight' refers to playing that is rhythmically-together. If you watch a really good band - doesn't matter what genre it is - who've grown up together and been playing and practicing for years, and who have an almost telepathic ability to move along the music together, you might say they were tight. www.englishforums.com

It begins where it should, with the rhythm section, and this part I find hard to describe because it really needs to be heard: the bassist and drummer establish such a tight groove that it would almost feel robotic, if the bass lines didn’t also contain so much catchy melody. I looked on YouTube for isolated bass and drum tracks of their songs to help illustrate the point, and (perhaps not shockingly) none exist, but listen closely to the bass line in a song like “I Want a New Drug” and then imagine hearing it a second time without it. 80% of the cool gets sucked right out. Similarly, the simple decision to vary the bass rhythm pattern in the verses of “Jacob’s Ladder” is the hook that makes that song work. Remove that little change, and you’re just not left with much. Plus, the bass player always had a cigarette dangling from his mouth (which we all know is very rock and roll).

Bounce around the internet for an hour, and you will also find that every member of Huey Lewis & the News is a highly skilled solo instrumentalist, from the bass player on up to Huey himself with his harmonica, but they resist playing with flash and stay in their lanes, playing together simply, in service of the song. No individual player stands out unless the purpose is to make a song better by adding a burst of interest to the melody, rhythm, or harmony.

In the end, I suppose that’s what appeals to me most about Huey Lewis & the News. It’s a funny observation to be making about a bunch of once super-famous rich rock stars, but they are a group of human beings—flawed like all of us—who instead of constantly striving for individual attention, choose to work together toward a worthy common goal. In this case: rocking out.

Isn’t that the spirit of connectedness we should all be aiming for?