Trivia / Huey Lewis and the News

• Breakthrough Hit: Sports was the band's first no. 1 hit album in the U.S., and catapulted the band to international fame.
• Colbert Bump: American Psycho made them a lot more well-known among younger listeners thanks to a memetically popular scene where Patrick Bateman gushes about the band before murdering his colleague with an axe. Huey Lewis himself parodied the scene with "Weird Al" Yankovic as a nod to the boost in publicity the film gave him.
• He Also Did: Believe it or not, Huey's first touch of success was playing with Irish hard rock legends Thin Lizzy, contributing harmonica to a live album, and even appearing in the credits for the album, several years before The News had a breakthrough.
• What Could Have Been: They were scheduled to play the Philadelphia leg of Live Aid and were in some of the promotional material, but decided on 28 June to pull out over concerns that the money raised by relief efforts thus far had not been reaching those it was intended to help. "It was a very tough decision," Lewis told Rolling Stone. "We felt, having done the USA for Africa thing, that we should wait and watch that ... The prudent thing to do is to see how that money translates into food for the people before we do another one." Harry Belafonte, who had organised USA for Africa, responded harshly, calling Lewis's scepticism "disruptive and divisive". He had himself recently returned from a trip to Africa to see how the money had so far been spent, and suggested that Lewis do the same. "For him to sit back here and send out information based on hearsay is unfair to his colleagues and very unfair to the victims."

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