Climbing the Pop Mountain with Huey: A Look Back at 1988’s Slick Sounds Upon a Saxophone-Laced Summit

Huey Lewis & The News – Small World (Chrysalis – OV 41622, 1988 🇺🇸)

I’m always waxing poetic about 1989, but really—if you get obsessive about this kind of thing—you can almost feel, like a gust of wind just out of reach, the excitement of pop music’s late-’80s peak approaching in ‘88. Where exactly it culminated, I’d need a minute to decide. But Small World was absolutely on the way up the mountain.

You could say the album is a touch overproduced—but so was everything chasing the charts in those days. What makes this one stand out is its NOLA-esque flair and bold, brassy (Tower of Power Horns) swing. It’s slick and it’s better than you remember.

I bring up Huey today for two reasons:

• One, he’s still working through his hearing loss and aiming to return to music: something we should all be rooting for.

• Two, his fun recent cameo in the Gibson video, made with the Back to the Future crew, which is helping the search for Marvin Berry’s long-lost Gibson ES-345.

Wait—it’s missing? Okay. Let’s find it. And hopefully Huey will get to play some music on stage with it.