Sports is the third album by American rock band Huey Lewis and the News, released on September 15, 1983, by Chrysalis Records. It reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 on June 30, 1984, and ultimately charted for 160 weeks. Sports was ranked No. 2 on the Billboard year-end album chart for 1984 and spawned four top-ten hits on the Billboard Hot 100, with "Heart and Soul" and "The Heart of Rock & Roll" earning Grammy Award nominations. Sports also did well internationally, where most of its singles charted in the top 40 in multiple countries. The album has been certified 7× Platinum by the RIAA.
Writing
"The Heart of Rock & Roll" was developed after the band performed at the Agora Theatre and Ballroom in Cleveland, Ohio in 1980, which they had been told was a "great rock & roll town". The following day, Lewis told his bandmates that he felt the heart of rock and roll really was in Cleveland and thought the sentiment would make for a good song, but the band convinced him to slightly alter the lyrics to "the heart of rock & roll is still beating". It was written in the late 1970s while Lewis was working with Thin Lizzy, whose frontman Phil Lynott liked the song so much that he would sing a fast-paced version at some of his concerts. Another version of "Bad Is Bad" appeared on Dave Edmunds' album Repeat When Necessary (1979), featuring Lewis on harmonica.
The idea for "I Want a New Drug" came to Lewis during a car ride to his lawyer's office, and he wrote down the majority of the lyrics upon arriving.
Sports also contains cover versions of "Heart and Soul", written by the songwriting team of Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn, and "Honky Tonk Blues", written by Hank Williams.
Production
Sports was self-produced by the band after their manager, Bob Brown, felt the band's own demos were better than the producers they had been considering. The first attempt at this was deemed unsatisfactory and the song was re-recorded with the full band, but after the album was mixed, Lewis decided that both "I Want a New Drug" and "The Heart of Rock & Roll" needed to be re-recorded with sequenced bass and drums, adding a slight tempo increase in the process. The cover art features a photo of the band at the 2 AM Club, a bar located in Mill Valley, California, where the band had performed during its early days. A bar was chosen for the shoot because the band reasoned that most people watched televised sporting events in bars.
| rev2 = The Rolling Stone Album Guide
| rev2score =
| rev3 = The Village Voice
| rev3score = B+
Sports was released on September 15, 1983. The lead single, "Heart and Soul", peaked at number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. The album's second release, "I Want a New Drug", turned out to be the band's second best-selling single, peaking at number 6 on the Hot 100 (although this would be considered platinum by modern single certification standards). The third single from the album, "The Heart of Rock & Roll", continued the band's success, peaking at number 6 on the Hot 100. "Heart and Soul" was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal by a Group at the 26th Annual Grammy Awards in 1984, while "The Heart of Rock & Roll" was nominated for Record of the Year at the 27th Annual Grammys in 1985. Sports charted in the top 40 in many countries outside the United States, including Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
"I Want a New Drug" became the focus of a lawsuit against artist Ray Parker Jr., who was accused of plagiarizing the song for his 1984 hit, "Ghostbusters". The case was eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed sum, although Parker later countersued Lewis for breach of a confidentiality agreement, after Lewis discussed the lawsuit on VH1's Behind the Music in 2001.
Legacy
The album is critiqued by the character Patrick Bateman in both the book (1991) and film (2000) versions of American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. According to Bateman, Sports marks the point in the band's career in which they "really came into their own, commercially and artistically." In 2013, Lewis, along with "Weird Al" Yankovic, parodied this scene in a video for Funny or Die, wherein Lewis mirrors Bateman's character and chats with Yankovic about American Psycho.
On May 10, 2013, Huey Lewis and the News embarked upon a Sports 30th Anniversary Tour, in which they performed the album in its entirety, as well as other songs.
| 22
|-
!scope="row"|Canadian Albums (RPM)
| 3
|-
!scope="row"|European Top 100 Albums
|align="center"|47
|-
|-
!scope="row"|Japanese Albums (Oricon)
| 55
|-
|-
|-
|-
!scope="row"|UK Albums (OCC)
| 23
|-
|-
!scope="col"|Chart (2013)
!scope="col"|Peak<br /> position
|-
|}
Year-end charts
{|class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center;"
|-
!Chart (1984)
!Position
|-
!scope="row"|Canadian Albums Chart
|3
|-
!scope="row"|New Zealand Albums Chart
|44
|-
!scope="row"|Norwegian Albums Chart (Julen Period)
|7
|-
!scope="row"|US Billboard Top Pop Albums
|2
|-
!Chart (1985)
!Position
|-
!scope="row"|Canadian Albums Chart
|88
|-
!scope="row"|US Billboard Top Pop Albums
|14
|}
Singles and tracks
{| class="wikitable"
!Year
!Single
!Chart
!Position
|-
|rowspan=3|1983
|rowspan=2|"Heart and Soul"
|Billboard Top Rock Tracks
|align="center"|1
|-
|The Billboard Hot 100
|align="center"|8
|-
|rowspan=3|"I Want a New Drug"
|Billboard Top Rock Tracks
|align="center"|7
|-
|rowspan=10|1984
|The Billboard Hot 100
|align="center"|6
|-
|Billboard Hot Dance/Disco
|align="center"|1
|-
|rowspan=2|"The Heart of Rock & Roll"
|The Billboard Hot 100
|align="center"|6
|-
|Billboard Top Rock Tracks
|align="center"|5
|-
|rowspan=3|"If This Is It"
|Billboard Adult Contemporary
|align="center"|5
|-
|Billboard Top Rock Tracks
|align="center"|3
|-
|The Billboard Hot 100
|align="center"|6
|-
|"Finally Found a Home"
|Billboard Top Rock Tracks
|align="center"|41
|-
|rowspan=2|"Walking on a Thin Line"
|Billboard Top Rock Tracks
|align="center"|16
|-
|The Billboard Hot 100
|align="center"|18
|-
|}