Huey Lewis and the News (formerly known as Huey Lewis & The American Express) are an American rock band based in San Francisco, California. They had a run of hit singles during the 1980s and early 1990s, eventually achieving 19 top ten singles across the Billboard Hot 100, Adult Contemporary, and Mainstream Rock charts. Their sound draws upon earlier pop, rhythm & blues and doo-wop artists, and their own material has been labelled as blue-eyed soul, new wave, power pop, and roots rock.
In 1972, singer/harmonica player Huey Lewis and keyboardist Sean Hopper joined the Bay Area jazz-funk band Clover. Clover had recorded several albums in the 1970s, and in the middle of the decade transplanted themselves to Britain to become part of the UK pub rock scene. Without Lewis, they eventually became the backing band for Elvis Costello’s first album My Aim Is True. Lewis also worked with Irish band Thin Lizzy, contributing harmonica to the song “Baby Drives Me Crazy”, recorded onstage for the Live and Dangerous album. Thin Lizzy bassist/vocalist Phil Lynott introduces Lewis by name during the song. The band returned to the Bay Area by the end of the 1970s.
The group’s first two albums were well-received, with Huey Lewis’s personal charisma as a frontman gaining notice from publications such as The Washington Post, but they struggled to find a wide audience. Their most successful album, Sports, was released in 1983. The album, along with its music videos being featured on MTV, catapulted the group to worldwide fame. Their popularity significantly expanded when the song “The Power of Love” was featured in the 1985 film Back to the Future. “The Power of Love” reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 58th Academy Awards.
The group’s 1986 album, Fore!, produced two further number-one singles in “Stuck with You” and “Jacob’s Ladder”. The band’s other top-ten hits, all from the 1980s, include “Do You Believe in Love”, “Heart and Soul”, “I Want a New Drug”, “The Heart of Rock & Roll”, “If This Is It”, “Hip to Be Square”, “I Know What I Like”, “Doing It All for My Baby” and “Perfect World”.
Though not formally disbanded, the group has not been active as a performing unit since 2018 when Lewis was diagnosed with Ménière’s disease, an inner ear disorder. In 2020, they released Weather, which contains songs the band recorded prior to Lewis’s hearing loss.
