Sports

The title of this article is ambiguous. Further meanings are listed under Sports (disambiguation) .

Sports
Studio album by Huey Lewis & the News
Publication (s)	September 15, 1983
admission	1982
Label (s)	Chrysalis Records
Format (s)	LP , MC , CD
Title (number)	9
running time	37:14
occupation	Singing : Huey Lewis Bass : Mario Cipollina Guitar : Chris Hayes Guitar , saxophone : Johnny Colla Keyboard : Sean Hopper Drums : Bill Gibson
production	Huey Lewis & the News
Studio (s)	Fantasy Studios , Berkeley ; Record Plant , Sausalito ; The Automatt , San Francisco
chronology Picture This 1982 Sports Fore! 1986

Sports is the third studio album by the American rock band Huey Lewis & the News , released in 1983 by Chrysalis . It was the band's first album to top the album charts in the United States and was featured in the music charts of the relevant European markets ( Great Britain and Germany ). Of the five singles released , four reached the top ten of the American hit lists, in Germany the song I Want a new Drug was the most successful. To date, sports , the most commercially successful album of the group founded in 1979 and still existing.

Emergence

The album was the band itself produced and almost immediately after the moderate success of the previous album Picture This added. While the album was being recorded, the band's record company, Chrysalis Records, was taken over by CBS Records . Since the band could not be sure of their future, they kept the master tapes of the recordings. The sound engineer Bob Clearmountain only edited individual songs during the sound mix so that he didn't get the embarrassment of having to give up the entire album if the label should decide to take possession of it.

The band decided to give concerts in small halls and clubs and to present the new material that way. After the reorganization at Chrysalis was completed, the band handed over the tapes and the album was released on September 15, 1983. Among other things, it contained a cover version of the Hank Williams song Honky Tonk Blues . The cover photo showed the band at "2am Club" in Mill Valley ( Marin County ).

The group performed in Germany in 1984 and also took part in various television appointments. On October 13th, the performance took place in Essen's Grugahalle as part of the 14th Rockpalast Night , and the band also appeared on October 18th on the show Ohne Filter and on October 22nd on Formula One . Between October 17 and October 23, 1984 the band gave concerts in Neu-Isenburg , Munich , Berlin , Hamburg and Cologne . The appearance at Rockpalast Nacht was released on DVD in 2004, along with another appearance by the band that took place in 1991 .

Chart positions Explanation of the data

Albums

Sports   US 1 06/30/1984 (160 weeks)   UK 23 09/14/1985 (24 weeks)   DE 29 December 3rd, 1984 (12 weeks)

Singles

Heart and Soul   US 8th 11/26/1983 (21 weeks)   UK 61 11/23/1985 (8 weeks)   DE 39 02/27/1984 (11 weeks) I want a new drug   US 6th March 24, 1984 (19 weeks) The Heart of Rock & Roll   US 6th 06/09/1984 (4 weeks)   DE 71 07/23/1984 (2 weeks)   UK 78 07/07/1984 (4 weeks) If This is It   US 6th 09/15/1984 (17 weeks)   UK 39 10/20/1984 (7 weeks) Walking on a thin line   US 18th December 8, 1984 (11 weeks)

The first single on the album was Heart and Soul , which reached number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. The music video shot for this contained recordings from San Francisco and an appearance by the then soap opera star Sidney Coleman. The song I Want a New Drug , which was released as the second single, reached number 6 on the charts and was awarded a gold single for 500,000 units sold . The song was also the focus of a legal battle with Ray Parker, Jr. , who was accused of his hit Ghostbusters being a plagiarism of I Want a New Drug. The Heart of Rock & Roll , If This is It and Walking on a Thin Line followed as further singles . Music videos were shot for all singles and for Bad Is Bad .

In 1990 a copy of the album called Chrysalis 25th Anniversary Special Edition was released in Great Britain . Packed in a so-called long box, it contained the CD and a 30-page booklet about the history of Chrysalis Records. In 1999 a remastered new edition of the album called "Expanded Edition" was released, which contained five additional, previously unreleased tracks. For the 30th anniversary of the album, Capitol Records released the so-called 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of the album, which also contained a second CD on which live versions of all songs on the album were in the original order. The selection and composition of the songs was done by Johnny Colla.

Litigation

In 1984, Ray Parker Jr. was commissioned by the producers of the film Ghostbusters to develop the theme song for the film. Later that year he was sued by Huey Lewis & the News, alleging that the songs Ghostbusters and I Want a New Drug had similarities .

→ Main article : I Want a New Drug

Track list

1. (5:01) - The Heart of Rock & Roll (Johnny Colla, Huey Lewis )
2. (4:10) - Heart and Soul ( Mike Chapman , Nicky Chinn )
3. (3:46) - Bad is Bad (Alex Call, John Ciambotti, Sean Hopper, Huey Lewis, John McFee, Michael Schriener)
4. (4:46) - I Want a New Drug (Chris Hayes, H. Lewis)
5. (5:08) - Walking on a Thin Line (Pessis, Wells)
6. (3:42) - Finally Found a Home (Hayes, Lewis, Brown)
7. (3:46) - If This Is It (Colla, Lewis)
8. (3:39) - You Crack Me Up (Mario Cippolina, Lewis)
9. (3:16) - Honky Tonk Blues ( Hank Williams )

The "Expanded Edition" of the album, released in 1999, contained five previously unreleased bonus tracks , namely:

11. (5:12) - The Heart of Rock & Roll - session take - (Colla, Lewis)
12. (5:39) - Walking on a Thin Line - session take - (Pessis, Wells)
13. (4:25) - If This is It - live in San Francisco , February 21, 1985 - (Colla, Lewis)
14. (4:26) - Heart and Soul - live in San Francisco, February 21, 1985 - (Chapman, Chinn)
15. (5:25) - I Want a new Drug - live in Los Angeles January 15, 1984 - (Hayes, Lewis)

In 2013 a further edition was released, which contained live versions of all songs by Sports on a second CD :

1. (5:38) - The Heart of Rock & Roll (Live in Cleveland, 1988)
2. (3:52) - Heart and Soul (Live in Cleveland, 1988)
3. (3:48) - Bad is Bad (Live in Boston, 1987)
4. (7:56) - I Want a new Drug (Live in Sydney, 1989)
5. (5:39) - Walking on a Thin Line (Live in Chicago, 1983)
6. (3:55) - Finally Found a Home (Live in Cleveland, 1988)
7. (4:35) - If This is It (Live in New Orleans, 1986)
8. (3:54) - You Crack Me Up (Recorded live at The Troutfarm, 2012)
9. (3:42) - Honky Tonk Blues (Recorded live at The Troutfarm, 2012)

reception

Sports was awarded a gold record on February 13th. The album received its first platinum award on September 29, 1984, followed by five platinum awards in November 1984. To date, Sports has been awarded platinum seven times, most recently on July 20, 1987. In 1986, the band received a Grammy Award for the music video for The Heart of Rock 'n' Roll . The album is one of the only five albums that reached the top of the US album charts in 1984. The others were Michael Jackson's Thriller , the soundtrack to Footloose , Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA , and Purple Rain by Prince .

The magazine Musikexpress wrote that “if the newspaper that you read while the LP is being played becomes more important” than the music - then “something might be wrong with the record.” Or everything is right, it “adapts to it due to a lack of friction Background on. ”The musicians delivered“ custom work, ”the songs mostly also fit. But everything would remain honest. The band brings out "the love of the blues in various shades," set the pace, vary - and yet: the stool does not wobble, you are also not hit "by the same". For example, Hank Williams' “Honky Tonk Blues” is “simply dead, everyone, out”. What I like all around are “the guitars (arrangement and execution). Hitch chances maybe for “You Cracked Me Up” that Mario Cipollina made with Huey.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote for Allmusic that the album was better than its predecessor because it had a “clear, clean production”, but the “real key” were the songs on it. While the previous albums were "jagged with filler material", "almost every song on Sports is able to grab the listener." The group's craftsmanship is undeniable. There is a reason why “well over half of the songs on the album have become great American hit singles” - they would immediately “become catchy tunes that would be driven home with the economic precision of a well-functioning bar band that would do just enough for the songs I used polish to sound like they came from superstars. ”And that is exactly what Sports made the band to be.

Other publications

• CD Chrysalis 25th Anniversary Special Edition (1990)
• CD Sports Expanded Edition (1999)
• DVD Huey Lewis at Rockpalast (2004)
• CD Sports 30th Anniversary Deluxe (2013)

Web links

• Official website of the band
• Sports at Allmusic (English). Retrieved January 18, 2013.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Linernotes by Gary Graff in the booklet of the CD Sports - 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
2. ↑ Website "Marin Untold Stories," ( Memento of the original from July 8, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved January 16, 2013 
3. ↑ ^{a b} Info sheet “Single Facts”; Supplement to the promo single for Walking on a Thin Line
4. ↑ Charts DE Charts UK Charts US
5. ^ MTV - Behind the Music
6. ↑ Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) awards database , accessed January 17, 2013
7. ↑ Huey Lewis's Old, Weird America, grantland.com , accessed May 29, 2016
8. ↑ Musikexpress, issue 12/1983, page 78
9. ↑ Review on allmusic.com , accessed January 14, 2013