Back to the Future (1985)

No, I'm not reviewing the movie (although that is something I should do at some point). I'm just reviewing the soundtrack, or more specifically, a couple of songs on the soundtrack, written by the greatest band ever, Huey Lewis and the News.

First, though, a bit of backstory. In my last HLN post, I linked to a video of the Ghostbusters theme song, in place of I Want a New Drug. The reason for this was simple; back in 1984, when Ghostbusters was in post-production, Columbia Pictures was looking for the right theme song. They found it on the Sports album. They offered Huey and the boys a lot of money for the rights to use I Want a New Drug, but the band turned them down, not feeling that they were ready for Hollywood.

Well, studio execs don't let a little thing like a lack of permission stop them. They handed the song to Ray Parker Jr., and told him to do a song that sounded just like I Want a New Drug. And he came through, big time. The backing track for the song is ripped right out of the verse for Drug, to the point that Huey and the band sued Parker for plagiarism. The case was settled out of court, but according to Huey in an interview years later, they got paid $7 million.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios approached Huey and the band with an offer to do a song for their new movie, Back to the Future. At first Huey balked, not wanting to write a song with that title, but Universal countered with the option to write whatever song he wanted to do. Having learned that the studios really don't take 'no' for an answer, the band agreed, and contributed two original songs to the soundtrack of the new movie.

The first track is The Power of Love which, thanks in large part to the movie's popularity as well as an amazing tie-in video, became the band's first #1 single. What can I say about this song? It's fantastic, one of the band's best. I honestly thought the Tower of Power was on the track as well, because it opens with what sounds like a blast of brass instruments. But it's just the six core band members, with Sean Hopper's keyboards doing the yeoman's work to really bring the power to the song's opening chords. Chris Hayes contributes a great guitar solo as well, but there's no saxophone; Johnny Colla is on rhythm guitar duty for this one.

The song was released as a single in June of 1985, and reached the #1 position on the Billboard Hot 100 on August 24th, staying there for two weeks. The B-side was Bad is Bad from the Sports album, leaving Honky Tonk Blues as the only song on the album that didn't end up on a single at some point. The song also topped the Billboard Top Rock tracks list, as well as the Australian, Canadian, and Japanese charts during the year.

The second track, Back in Time, was the song playing over the closing credits. Unlike Power of Love, this song relates to the movie's plot, hitting some of the story beats from the film. It also plays briefly in the scene where Marty wakes up after returning to 1985 at the end of the film. This one is less of a rocker, but in a way sounds more like a HLN song than the big hit did. Maybe it's because Johnny Colla is playing the saxophone this time; Johnny's sax always sounds awesome. But once again it's Chris Hayes on the guitar solo, which has shades of a couple of other songs in it (Change of Heart and Walking on the Thin Line come to mind). Johnny follows up with a sax solo before the closing, because why not?

The rest of the soundtrack includes some music from the 50s, including the legendary Johnny B. Goode, but I'm just talking about Huey Lewis at this point. But just listening to those two songs again makes we want to sit down and watch that movie once more.