Huey Lewis and the News


"Watch out for these golf balls!" 

I think we should talk about how everybody completely misunderstands Huey Lewis in general, so it's no wonder they completely miss the sarcasm of their 4th album, Fore!. Stuck With You is a good example, but Hip To Be Square is the most egregiously misinterpreted. You forget that he's up there fist pumping the punchline, 'cause these are the jokes, son. "Bourgeois Hippies" is hilarious. 

Huey Lewis and the News is pure hustle, they're hamming up the night club act and mocking all the false sentiments. The problem is that they sound invitingly sincere, they sound serious so you take it serious. It's confirmation bias, you hear the mythologies you tell yourself and feel validated. Then they get back to the bus after the set and say "what a pack o' maroons." Huey Lewis the person thinks the songs are funny in the same way his cameo in Back to the Future where he says Marty's band is "just too darn loud" is funny. It's one of those 14 flavors of irony, you figure it out. Did you catch that? That's the kind of humor i'm talking about. 

Let's take the Back to the Future song, Power of Love. What's the real context of that song? He's saying "hey, bozo, this ain't rocket science. You think love is complicated and makes you dumb, but you don't have to pay to play and it might just be as awesome as Steve Miller says it is. 

How about Bad is Bad from Sports? Oh, you thought when i said your kid's band is bad i meant they're awesome? No, i meant they are objectively terrible. 

Do you believe in love? Do you, 'cause that's the kind of desperate i'm out on the prowl to find. 

Stuck with You is probably the most obvious, but even that gets mansplained away as "out of touch tedium." 

I want a new drug that makes me feel like i'm in a meaningful relationship with another human being, wink wink. 

Believe me, i hate defending Fred Durst, but that's exactly what's going on here. You're not on the same page, possibly reading a different book, and confusing any of this for sincerity is a serious problem for everyone. It's not the mean-spirited kind of sarcasm you might be more accustomed to, but it's sarcasm all the same.

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