Do You Believe In Love?

Album: Picture This (1982)
Charted: 9 7
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Songfacts®:

  • Early in his career, John "Mutt" Lange wrote and produced this song for a British band he was working with called Supercharge, which issued it on their 1979 album Body Rhythm under the title "We Both Believe In Love." Supercharge had some success in Europe, but weren't known at all in America, where the album wasn't even released.

    In 1977, Lange produced two albums for a band called Clover, which was from San Francisco but had moved to England to make their mark. Elvis Costello thought highly enough of Clover to use them as his backing band on his album My Aim Is True, but the group couldn't break through in Britain as they hoped. Returning to America, Clover regrouped as Huey Lewis & the News, got a deal with Chrysalis Records, and released their first album in that configuration in 1980. It flopped. Chrysalis let them make a second album, but this time they had to have a hit.

    The label strongly suggested they record "Do You Believe in Love?" The band wasn't thrilled with this idea: Clover's work with Lange didn't pan out, so why should they record another one of his songs? Lewis and his bandmates were determined to make music on their terms, but they were in their 30s and running out of time. At the urging of their manager, Bob Brown, they recorded this "overly commercial" song for their second album. It ended up being their first hit, and the song that paid the bills. It was a teachable moment for the band, who worked hard from that point forward to create at least two hits on every album, even if it meant compromising a bit.
  • Mutt Lange is a master producer but not the most deft lyricist; many of his songs are rather bawdy when separated from the grooves. This one is about a guy who makes a move on a girl, telling her, "I want to love you all over." Seems he gets his wish, as by the end of the song he says he's got her, and it's gonna last. Like most of Lange's songs, the chorus is so catchy the verses often get left behind.
  • The original version of this song had this chorus:

    We both believe in love
    We both believe its ours
    You really feel the love
    Oh you really make me see the stars


    Huey Lewis re-wrote it to:

    Do you believe in love?
    Do you believe it's true?
    Do you believe in love?
    And you're making me believe it too


    Lewis knew he'd get better results by asking a girl if she believes in love rather than telling her she does.
  • The Picture This album also includes "Hope You Love Me Like You Say You Do" and "Workin' for a Livin'," which were both minor hits. The next Huey Lewis & the News album was Sports, which boasts five big hits: "I Want A New Drug," "The Heart of Rock & Roll," "Heart And Soul," "If This Is It" and "Walking On A Thin Line." It was quite a turnaround from just a few years earlier when the band was struggling to get by.
  • This song got a lot of help from MTV, which was only about six months old when they put the song in hot rotation in early 1982. European artists had been making videos for years, so MTV's library was filled with A Flock Of Seagulls and The Human League; they were desperate for American acts, rockers preferred. Most Americans didn't make videos pre-MTV because there was no place to show them, but in Huey Lewis & the News' stomping grounds of San Francisco, there was a cable TV show that shot a video for their song "Some Of My Lies Are True (Sooner Or Later)" in 1980 just so they could air it. That video got the band a deal with Chrysalis Records, a British label that was all-in on music video.

    Chrysalis made sure every Huey Lewis & the News song got a well-produced video. The strategy paid off - the band became one of the popular artists on the network, boosting their sales considerably.
  • Even by early MTV standards, the video is a little strange. It shows the band doing everything together, including one scene where they were all in bed with a woman (it's not as kinky as it sounds). In a Songfacts interview with Huey Lewis, he told the story:

    "The label wanted to do this really serious video, so they hired an advertising guy who was a fashion guy, who dressed the set up in pastel colors and dressed us up in matching pastels with lots of make-up and shot the video all day long, hard.

    Two weeks later, we went to see the rough cut, and everybody was there: the record company, us, and the video company. Probably about 30 people. The director stands up and says, 'It's not colorized yet. It's going to look much better when it's colorized. This is just the rough cut.' He turns off the lights and plays the video... and my heart sank. It was just horrible. There was no direction, there was no reason for this guy to be singing off into the distance. This is the video where we are all in bed singing to the girl for some reason.

    I didn't know what was going on in that video. I just had this terrible sinking feeling. And when the video ended, everybody stood up and gave us a standing ovation! I thought to myself, Well, clearly there's no art to this. Nobody knows anything about this. We're already writing our own songs and producing our own records, we need to be making our own videos.

    That's when I entered into that stage of having fun and trying to zig when the song zags. So, we did all of the rest of the videos, mostly."
  • Alex Call was the lead singer in Clover, and went on to write "Perfect World" for Huey Lewis & the News as well as "Jenny (867-5309)" for Tommy Tutone. Here's what he told Songfacts about Lange's production style: "Mutt is a real studio rat. He is Mr. Endurance in the studio. When we were making the records with him, he'd start working at 10:30, 11 in the morning and go until 3 at night, night after night. He is one of the guys that really developed that whole multi-multi-multi track recording. We'd do eight tracks of background vocals going, 'Oooooh' and bounce those down to one track and then do another eight, he was doing a lot of that.

    A lot of the things you hear on Def Leppard and that kind of stuff, he was developing that when he worked with us. We were the last record he did that wasn't enormous, and that's not his fault, he did a really good job with us. The problem with us was our focus was too scattered. Huey Lewis was kind of the R&B guy, I was kind of the country guy, it just didn't quite work. We used to do horn lines with pedal steel and harmonica - truly weird. Mutt is famous for working long hours. The story I heard about one of the Shania sessions, he had Rob Hajakos, who's one of the famous fiddle session men down here. Rob was playing violin parts for like seven or eight hours and finally he said, 'Can I take a break,' and Mutt says, 'What do you mean take a break?' Rob goes, 'Have you ever held one of these for eight hours under your chin?' Mutt really loves to record, he loves music and he's a real perfectionist and an innovator. An unbelievable commercial hook writer. I just wish that Shania had done one of my songs."
  • The girl in the video is Lisabeth Shatner, daughter of William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk on Star Trek.
  • The song was used in the movie The Wedding Singer (1998), and also in episodes of WKRP in Cincinnati ("To Err Is Human" - 1982), Miami Vice ("The Prodigal Son" - 1985) and Chuck ("Chuck Versus the Seduction" - 2008).

Comments: 11

  • Shark from Norwich CteThat makes sense that Colla's voice does all the harmonies on the bridge. His voice is very recognizable and a huge part of the H Lewis & the News sound. Similar to Michael Anthony with Van Halen.
  • Frank Schnyder from Los AngelesJohnny Colla has said recently on FaceBook that the bridge harmonies are his voice alone multi-tracked several times.
    Also, this song is done live now in a slower, more soulful groove. You can find it on the 2006 Live At 25 CD/DVD.
  • Barry from Sauquoit, NyOn March 27th 1982, Huey Lewis & the News performed "Do You Believe in Love?" on the ABC-TV program 'American Bandstand'...
    At the time the song was at #18 on Billboard's Hot Top 100 chart; fifteen days later on April 11th, 1982 it would peaked at #7 {for 3 weeks} and spent 17 weeks on the Top 100...
    Between 1982 and 1994 the San Franciscan sextet had twenty-one Top 100 records; thirteen made the Top 10 with three reaching #1, "The Power of Love" for 2 weeks in 1985, "Stuck with You" for 3 weeks in 1986, and "Jacob's Ladder" for 1 week in 1987...
    They just missed having a fourteenth Top 10 record when "Couple of Days Off" peaked at #11 in 1991.
  • Mike from Las Vegas, Nv.I'm going to see Huey Lewis and The News in 3 days (2/6/2015). It's gonna be a great show.
  • Adam from Mattapoisett, MaThe original title of the song was not "Do You Really Believe in Love." Mutt Lange wrote the song and titled it "We Both Believe in Love." Huey stated this on VH1's "Behind the Music."
  • Damaramu from Houston, TxELO's "Sweet Talkin' Woman" predates "Do You Believe In Love?" by 5 years.
  • Jane from Austin, TxWhoever wrote in wikipedia is WRONG. Sweet Talkin' Woman came out about 2 or 3 years BEFORE Huey Lewis' song.
  • Logan from Troy, MtSomeone on Wikipedia said that "Sweet Talkin' Woman" by The Electric Light Orchestra is essentially "Do You believe in Love?" for it's "extremely similar lyrics, progression, and vocal stylings"

    Type up "Sweet Talkin' Woman" in Wikipedia and it says it. I know it shouldn't be looked at so closely, but listen to the songs together, and except for the voice parts being different, it's in so many ways the same.
  • Sean from Brockton, MaThe original lyrics/title of the song was "Do you really believe in love". "Really" was left out of the final product to beter match the song's tempo.
  • Michael from San Diego, CaLove the humorous video in which all five band members sing to and and compete with each other for the attention of a woman.
  • Tim from Hendersonville, TnHuey Lewis & the News were a regional club band. One of the last places they played as a club band before getting their big record deal was at a place called Tremors in Hicksville, Ohio. Tremors was closed for business when I looked in 1992 or so.
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