40 years ago last Friday, September 15th, 1983, Huey Lewis released the album that would change his life and his career. ‘Sports’ is the third album by Huey Lewis and the News, and their first of two back-to-back #1 albums.
‘Sports’ featured four Top 10 hits -- "Heart and Soul" (#8), "I Want a New Drug" (#6), "The Heart of Rock & Roll" (#6), and "If This Is It" (#6). A fifth single, "Walking on a Thin Line," peaked at #18.
‘Sports’ spent 160 weeks on the Billboard 200 and was #2 on Billboard's year-end chart for 1984. It's been certified seven-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Huey commented on the title of the album. He said, "There's about seven different reasons why we called the album Sports, none of which on its own is good enough, if you know what I mean. It sort of looked right, it sounded right, it goes with the cover. And there's no real big story behind it at all. A few of us are sports fans; a few of us could care less. What we really are is musicians."
Huey later talked about ‘Sports’ being one of the best selling albums of the 80’s: "You know, we sold 10-million records, people don't do that these days. But then, you gotta realize so did Michael Jackson, so did Bruce Springsteen, so did, y'know, Madonna, so did Lionel Richie. It was a radio world. It was an audio world in those days. Even though MTV had started, it was only playing the songs that were radio hits. And so, it didn't matter what you're video looked like. If the song was a hit, they were gonna play it."
[Source: Classic Hits Today]