YMMV / Huey Lewis and the News

• Awesome Music:
  • "That's the Power of Love"
  • All their hits are just plain awesome. "The Heart of Rock & Roll", "Do You Believe in Love", "Stuck with You", "Heart and Soul", "If This is It"...
  • Their appearance at the 1985 home opener for the San Francisco Giants at Candlestick park. Six part harmony, not an auto-tuner in sight. Awesome.
  • "Hip To Be Square", one of the band's most well-known songs, even before its use in American Psycho.
• Covered Up: How many were aware that "Do You Believe in Love" was originally recorded by a band called Supercharge, and was originally called "We Both Believe in Love"? Or that "Heart and Soul" was originally done by Exile.
• Epic Riff: Oh so many; "Hip to Be Square", "Heart and Soul", "I Want a New Drug"...
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Hip to Be Square" is well known for its use during a scene in American Psycho, when Patrick Bateman goes on about his love for Huey Lewis right before killing one of his colleagues.
    Patrick: In '87, Huey released this, Fore!, their most accomplished album. I think their undisputed masterpiece is "Hip to be Square", a song so catchy, most people probably don't listen to the lyrics. But they should, because it's not just about the pleasures of conformity, and the importance of trends, it's also a personal statement about the band itself.
  • An edit of "Hip to Be Square" that changes various lyrics to "Fuck bees" has also gone around (the "fuck" voice clip is from a Penn & Teller: Bullshit! clip, and "Bees" is formed from the "be square" vocals). This edit gained prominence as an Interrupting Meme involving the Honeyhive Galaxy music from Super Mario Galaxy, where the music starts normal, but then slowly comes to a stop before switching to the song. This version was famously featured in a Vinesauce stream with the Games Repainted mod of Galaxy, and was the basis of a post on SiIvaGunner, a YouTube channel devoted to Bait-and-Switch edits of video game music. As one YouTube commenter on the official music video put it, the rest of the comments were "either about fucking bees or American Psycho".
• Misattributed Song: Bruce Springsteen didn't make "The Heart of Rock and Roll", despite what Michael Scott says.
• Narm Charm: Their songs and especially music videos are shamelessly cheesy, but people still remember them fondly for a reason. Even those who refer to them as "yuppie music" generally seem to mean it affectionately.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Humorously enough, while The News sued Ray Parker Jr. for ripping off the bassline for "I Want A New Drug" for the Ghostbusters (1984) theme song, both songs sound an awful lot like M's 1979 hit "Pop Muzik."
• Values Dissonance: "Stuck With You", which Adam Carolla once summarized as being about "some yuppie couple that really needs to get divorced but decided it's just too much of a hassle", showcases an outdated approach towards relationships that hasn't been carried forth by younger generations, who are much more willing to break off a failing relationship rather than stay together just for the sake of appearances and formality. Millennials in particular have been delaying getting married until later in life largely to avoid winding up in a situation like the song's protagonist.

---