In The Number Fortys, we review every song that was sitting at #40 on the Billboard chats, starting in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either).
There's a lot of fun stuff to know about Huey Lewis and the News. Lead singer Huey Lewis, back when he was Hugh Cregg, sweet-talked a flight attendant into letting him onto a Transatlantic flight without paying (airports in the 70s were a different place, man). Some of the News backed up Elvis Costello on his debut album My Aim Is True (every Costello album after is light years better than his debut up until Trust). Also there's that American Psycho cultural analysis. And the fact that Ray Parker Jr. ripped off the subject of this post for "Ghostbusters." Lots of fun stories about HLatN.
Unfortunately, the music isn't much fun at all. 1982's "Do You Believe In Love" is a hooky fusion of new wave and doo-wop backing vocals (it's either a 5 or a 6, depending on my need for melodic bliss). And they have a #1 coming up next year that is a great piece of pop. Maybe the problem is that HLatN could be a terrific pop band, but all they really wanted to do was rock. Or maybe the problem is that their definition of rock was so narrow and boomer-centric. Or maybe they just happened to be a white rock band making slick videos soundtracked by hooky songs at a time when Mtv played mostly white rock bands, and therefore ended up being pulled out of relative obscurity into a massive audience.
Regardless, "I Want a New Drug," while titled like a Ramones song, sounds like a beer commercial.
It's possible to hear this song as a plea for all the drugs that came in its wake, if not a prophetic commercial for our present-day medicated lives. Paxil, Prozac, Adderall, Xanax, Ecstasy, Zoloft, Oxy, so many drugs. But that's giving the song way too much credit. "I Want a New Drug" is just a joke repeated over and over again, a joke that isn't all that funny to start with. You have to be incredibly boring to sing a song about wanting a new drug because of some serious reasons--your current drug intake has resulted in you crashing your car, disrupted your sleep patterns, altered the perceived density of your body, covered your face in zits, increased your anxiety, etc.--and have no one believe a word of it. Elliott Smith sang so convincingly about drugs that even during the (entirely possible) brief periods of is life when he wasn't on drugs, people still assumed that he was. Huey Lewis sang so unconvincingly about drugs that even after singing a song that basically says "I've taken every drug on earth to the point where I have become bored, and am now in search of an even more extreme drug experience," a boast so gloriously decadent it sounds almost Sadean, no one took him seriously. Maybe it was the tooty-toot horns. Anyway, the song may have entered the charts at #40, but it would go all the way to #6.
Shit, almost forgot to give this a score. It gets a 3.
THE NUMBER ONE
Yes was still at the top with "Owner of a Lonely Heart," which I'm pretty sure every middle schooler intentionally mis-sang as "Owner of a Lonely Fart" (much better than / the owner of a broken fart). It's still whatever score I gave it last week.
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