Continuing my look at the albums of 1986…

Huey Lewis and the News were the Hootie and the Blowfish of the 80s. Both bands had massive but short-lived success releasing feel-good pop rock driven by a charismatic frontman’s excellent vocals. And both were largely (and wrongly) relegated to joke status after the shine had worn off.

If 1983’s Sports was Huey Lewis’ Cracked Rear View, then 1986’s Fore! was their Fairweather Johnson — a triple-Platinum follow-up that still lived in the shadow of the bigger hit. The difference is that Sports went 7x Platinum — impressive, but not the Diamond-selling juggernaut Hootie could never escape.

OK, that analogy is breaking down so I’ll move on. Though Fore! sold half as many copies as Sports, it did produce two #1 hits, something its predecessor failed to accomplish. ‘Stuck With You’ and ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ became the band’s second and third chart-toppers, after the soundtrack hit ‘The Power of Love’ gave them their first a year earlier.

Three other songs reached the top ten — ‘Hip to Be Square,’ ‘I Know What I Like,’ and ‘Doing It All For My Baby’ — making Huey Lewis and the News the first band to land five singles from the same album in the top ten.

I enjoy every one of those songs and I consider their corniness more a feature than a bug. The same goes for the rest of the album, which mostly follow the same pattern. The exceptions are the last two tracks: the doo-wop inspired throwbacks ‘Naturally’ and ‘Simples As That.’

Incidentally, today’s SOTD was written by Bruce Hornsby and his brother John. It was originally intended for Hornsby’s album The Way It Is, on which Lewis served as a producer, but Hornsby wasn’t thrilled with the results so he gifted it to his friend.