After the phenomenal success that Huey Lewis And The News had
with their third album
Sports, one would have expected the band to pull out all the
stops for their followup release.
Ah, but following up a blockbuster album has sent more than one
pop artist spinning out of control – even Michael Jackson couldn’t
live up to the post-
Thriller hype. So, in a sense, it shouldn’t be that
surprising that
Fore! is not a strong album in the shadow of
Sports.
Lewis and crew do stick to the same formula that had brought the
band success to this point – for that matter, they hardly changed
their style at all from their start. A mixture of rock, doo-wop and
a capella, the band tries to recapture the magic that brought them
worldwide accalim.
Admittedly, if you look at the singles charts,
Fore! is hardly a failure. Four songs provided the band with
significant radio play, including “Stuck With You” and “Hip To Be
Square”. The problem is that not only were Lewis and the band
believing their own press releases, but they weren’t putting as
much into the music as they should have been.
Compared to
Sports, the songwriting on
Fore! is weak. “Jacob’s Ladder” is an attempt to be a little
more cerebral, but for a band like this, cerebral probably wasn’t
such a great idea. “Doing It All For My Baby,” another radio hit,
pales in comparison to earlier numbers like “If This Is It” – this
comes off as a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy… the more
you copy it, the less the quality.
Admittedly, “Stuck With You” is a song that locks itself into
your brain, and becomes catchy after a few listens. Unfortunately,
this could well be the best song on
Fore! – a shame, seeing the potential that this band showed
just one album prior.
The whole second side of
Fore! is pure filler, and doesn’t stand out as anything
special. Songs like “I Know What I Like” and “Forest For The Trees”
don’t impress; there’s a reason that no singles were culled from
this portion of the record.
So what happened? Part of the problem is that people most likely
expected something spectacular coming off of
Sports, and this album just didn’t fill the void. Also, it
almost seems like
Fore! was a rushed effort, never mind the fact it came out
three years after
Sports. Had Lewis and crew spent a little more time
tightening up the songwriting, and had they been a little more
cautious with what they selected to include on the album, this
could have been a worthy follow-up.
Fore! is a disappointment from which Lewis and The News
never fully recovered – a shame, seeing that their rise and
downfall was so sudden. If you must own this for the hits, then
pick up one of the greatest hits compilations.
