The Number Fortys: Huey Lewis & the News "The Heart of Rock & Roll"

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).

American cities with thriving music scenes in 1984 not mentioned in this song about all the places where the heart of rock and roll (whatever the fuck that means) was still beating (whatever the fuck that means too):

Athens, GA.

Minneapolis

Olympia

Chicago

Nashville

Providence

And cities where, according to this song, the heart was ‘still beating’:

San Antonio

Baton Rouge

Tulsa

Oklahoma City (pre-Flaming Lips)
Philadelphia (pre-Dead Milkmen) — referred to in the song as, bizarrely, ‘The Liberty Town’

Cleveland also gets mentioned, owing to the band’s overt Pere Ubu influence (I know, it's more likely they were thinking of WKRP In Cincinnati and got their Ohio cities confused). So does Washington D.C., because, sure HL&TN’s music might have sounded like a bunch of dads playing softball, but apparently these guys were way into Dischord and Go-Go. This gives me a chance to post a video by D.C. band Chalk Circle, my favorite Dischord band.

Wait. What's that? Chalk Circle never had anything released on Dischord despite being friends with all those guys and part of the same scene? That's weird, because this is better than 90% of the shaved head proto-boot camp jock jams that label put out in the 80s. I wonder what Chalk Circle didn't have that those other bands had....Hm....

Anyway, Huey does mention Seattle a full two years before the formation of Sub Pop. To continue the ‘heart’ metaphor, maybe he had his finger on the pulse of something.

But forgetting Minneapolis? In the year of Purple Rain, Let It Be, and Zen Arcade? Inexcusable.

Note: Special versions were recorded for different markets. So people in Arizona would get a ‘Phoenix’, or a ‘Tucson’ at the end of the song when they heard on the radio. Those versions don’t count. This version gets a 3.

THE NUMBER ONE

A mean-spirited UK music writer, Julie Burchill, I think, once referred to Phil Collins as the ugliest man in pop. If I remember right, she said he looked like George Orwell. Ouch. I have no strong feelings about Phil Collins' physical appearance either way. But I think it is worth mentioning that a song about how there's no way in fuck, statistically speaking, that Phil's loved one is coming back--it is quite literally against all odds--I think it's interesting that the first line in the chorus is 'take a look at me now,' as if Phil has internalized Burchill's criticism. This is a song about a guy who has no chance, knows he has no chance, and when he says 'take a look at me now,' he isn't saying it because he thinks she (most likely a she, in Phil's case) is going to change her mind when she sees how straight-up hot he is, the way Robert Plant or Kanye or someone would. He's saying it because he believes he looks pathetic. And looking pathetic is the only power he has left in the relationship, the power to hopefully making his departing loved one feel as bad as he does. It's something to think about when you listen to this dreck, I guess.