Stuck With You

Album: Fore! (1986)
Charted: 12 1
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Songfacts®:

  • "Stuck With You" is a great song to describe an inertia that keeps a relationship together after the power of love has attenuated. It's not the most romantic sentiment, but it's honestly pragmatic: We've made it this far, we might as well stick it out.

    Huey Lewis had been married for a few years when the song was released in 1986. A few years later, he and his wife split up.
  • The Huey Lewis & the News official site used to have a "Question Of The Week" section where Lewis would answer questions from fans. In 2013, he answer one asking who "Stuck With You" is about. Huey's reply:

    "None of your business! But, I will tell you,that although my songs are often inspired by real things, in fact, usually inspired by real life, they aren't always literal, and I always 'embellish'... but, I will also reveal that the person who inspired 'Stuck With You' didn't really like the song all that much.
  • This was the lead single from Fore!, the band's fourth album and follow-up to their wildly successful Sports, which had five hit singles. (For non-golfers, "fore!" is what you yell to warn people in the line of an errant shot. So the title follows the sports theme and is a pun on it being album number four.) The group was under a lot of pressure to deliver a leadoff hit single, but they struggled for months. Their manager, Bob Brown, made a personal appeal to Huey Lewis & the News guitarist Chris Hayes, asking him to come up with something. According to Hayes in a Rolling Stone interview, he responding by taking a six-pack of beer into the studio and emerging three hours with the music for "Stuck With You." Lewis added the lyrics, and they had their single.
  • Four of the five singles from Huey Lewis & the News' Sports album made the Top 10 in America; all five singles from Fore! got there. After "Stuck With You" came "Hip To Be Square" (#3), "Jacob's Ladder" (#1), "I Know What I Like" (#9) and "Doing It All For My Baby."

    Their success was well-earned. All of the members had been in other bands for years before Huey Lewis & the News formed in 1979. Their debut album, issued in 1980, flopped hard even though they had a substantial fanbase in San Francisco. They were all in their 30s and feared losing their record deal when they finally landed a hit with "Do You Believe In Love?" in 1980.
  • Huey Lewis & the News were staples on MTV thanks to their lighthearted videos that typically had very odd scenarios and at least one babe. "Stuck With You" opens with a vignette showing Lewis at a formal gathering where one guest after another hassles him about his next album. He finds a girl and they make their escape... in a rowboat. They end up on an island inhabited by people who love to party.

    In a Songfacts interview with Huey Lewis, he talked about their music video philosophy. "Avoid the literal translation of the song at all costs," he said. "Zig when the song zags, as it were. And just have fun, be funny."
  • This is one of several Huey Lewis & the News hits with rich harmony vocals influenced by The Beach Boys. Others include "If This Is It" and "Do You Believe in Love."
  • The music video was directed by Edd Griles and stars the model Keely Shaye Smith as Lewis' love interest. Griles also helmed Cyndi Lauper's videos for "Time After Time" and "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" and "She Bop."

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