The two “coke-iest” songs of the 1980s, according to Adam Scott
In a decade that was notably chock-full of cocaine, it’s not too difficult to call it when you see it in hindsight—at least, that’s what Adam Scott, star of hit TV drama Severance, says. Scott was only ten years old when Huey Lewis and the News’ album, Sports, was released in 1983, but the record has stuck with him over the past 40 years.
“I mean, that was fucking it,” he says of the album to Pitchfork. “[I] Just recently I went on a Huey Lewis YouTube jag and found concert footage from 1986 or something, and they were huge—like, arenas, just they were so huge. Sports is like Thriller or Born in the USA; there’s maybe two songs on it that aren’t hits. Just look at him on the cover of the album. He has the thin tie, and they’re just in a bar. His jacket’s over his shoulder. He’s like, ‘Eh, take it or leave it. This is me. We’re just some guys.’ It was perfectly calibrated marketing too. I mean, they really knew what they were doing.”
While you could argue Sports has not aged the best, it is undeniable in its unabashed ’80s style. From pulsating synths, long, gradual fade-outs and just-barely-distorted guitars to Lewis screaming “OWW!” in his best Little Richard impression on the opener, you can practically hear the neon signs and bomber jackets. In fact, some of the tracks on the album feel like parodies of the era from the future.
Scott shared that his step-sister happened to be in the background of the music video for breakout single ‘If This Is It’, as the band shot on location at the beach in his hometown of Santa Cruz, California. He claims, “‘You Crack Me Up’ is the coke-iest, most insane song. That and Robert Palmer’s ‘Looking for Clues’ might be the coke-iest songs of the ’80s.”
The former is quite literally a song about talking to a friend on cocaine, with the title being not-so-subtle wordplay. “You should see yourself in the mirror / With your leather lips and your snakeskin shoes / Do you have to shout in my ear? / Do me a favour, just stop talking for a minute or two”, sings Lewis as the song builds towards the chorus.
The other song Scott cites, ‘Looking for Clues’, is just as distinctly ’80s with its Talking Heads-esque funky, jittery groove. The paranoia-ridden track is accompanied by a silly, low-budget music video featuring Palmer dancing on a toy xylophone, like the scene in Big, which cuts to an aghast, jiggly dancing skeleton. One of the YouTube comments on the music video seems to agree with Scott, saying, “Someone once described this song as ‘what doing cocaine sounds like’, and it’s always stuck with me.”
It’s important to note that the ’80s crack epidemic in the United States disproportionately affected Black Americans, as the Reagan administration passed laws that created a 100:1 gram sentencing disparity between crack and cocaine. Studies show that racial minorities were far more likely to use crack than powder cocaine, which was more often used by white people.
