Songfacts®:

• Written by Huey Lewis along with the band's guitarist/horn player Johnny Colla, this is another fun, well-crafted hit song for the Huey Lewis & the News, one of their 12 US Top 10 hits in the '80s. It's about how rock music is alive and well all over the United States, similar in style to the Motown classic "Dancing in the Street," which also features powerful horns and shout-outs to lots of cities.
• Cleveland was the city that inspired this song. In 2013, Lewis told Billboard: "'The Heart of Rock & Roll' was written driving out of Cleveland. We'd heard that Cleveland was this great rock and roll town, and we're from San Francisco - how can Cleveland be anything? We went to play the Agora Ballroom and had this amazing gig. On the bus out of town I was looking at the skyline of Cleveland and I said, 'You know what boys? The heart of rock and roll really is in Cleveland. Hey, that's a pretty good song title.'
  
  Later I thought it through and went, 'The heart of rock and roll is still beating.'
  
  The idea is that, although the music business is in New York and LA, good rock and roll is where you find it."
  
  Cleveland had a rich rock history with a claim to the first rock concert. It's also where the DJ Alan Freed popularized the phrase "rock and roll," but the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame didn't open there until 1995, 12 years after this song was released.
• Different versions of this song were sent to radio stations with nearby cities inserted into the lyrics. For instance, if you lived in New Mexico, you might hear Huey mention that the Heart of Rock n' Roll is beating in Santa Fe. This geotargeting was very effective in an age when pop radio airplay was largely responsible for sales. The local cities were mentioned near the end, so you would listen through the whole song to hear it.
• When Huey Lewis went in the studio to customize the song for different cities, he happily sang the names of many American metros, but he drew the line at Canada.
  
  In a 2023 Songfacts interview with Lewis, he told the story:
  
  "They said, 'Now we're going to do Canada.' I said, 'Canada?!' And they go, 'Halifax.' I just couldn't do Halifax. I said, 'Look guys, I can't do that. Because the heart of rock n' roll can't be in frickin' Halifax, OK?' That's when I cut it off."
  
  Later, Lewis learned that Halifax really did rock.
  
  "The irony is, on the very next tour, we rehearsed it up there in Halifax in a hockey arena - we rehearsed our whole show. We were there for like a week, and I got to see the town. There was this little music bar there, and there was this great blues band playing... in Halifax, Canada! So, I said to myself, 'Wow. Halifax really is the heart of rock and roll.'"
• After the heartbeat drums that open the song, there's a clap that sounds like it came from a drum machine but is actually a hand clap drenched in echo. The band loves hand claps - check out the bridge on "Heart And Soul."
• This was the third of five singles from Sports, the third Huey Lewis & the News album. All of the singles were hits, and the album went on to sell over 7 million copies in America, putting the band of firm financial footing for the first time, which was very important to them - these guys were all in their 30s and had been working in music since the early '70s.
• The music video was directed by Edd Griles and shows the band larking about in New York City and Los Angeles. In New York, they see a punk show; in LA they check out some glam rockers. In between, we see the band performing in a more traditional style.
• Huey Lewis & the News opened the Grammy Awards in 1985 with a performance of this song, which was nominated for Record Of The Year. It lost to Tina Turner's "What's Love Got To Do With It."
• In 1985, the band released a concert film called Huey Lewis & the News - The Heart of Rock 'n' Roll, which was sold on Laser Disc and VHS. Directed by Bruce Gowers, it was recorded on March 19, 1985 at the Kabuki Theater in San Francisco. In 1986, the video won the Grammy Award for Best Music Video, Long Form - the only Grammy win in the band's history.
• Despite their phenomenal success (or maybe because of it), the band took some heat for making songs that some critics labeled "uninspiring." Lewis addressed this criticism in a 1987 interview with San Francisco Chronicle, saying, "Nowhere is it written that rock and roll has to be political or change the world. One thing rock and roll has to be is true. And if it rings true, it's right."