Huey Lewis Still Hasn’t Seen American Psycho Despite “Hip to Be Square” Scene

Eddie Fu
·3 min read
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The post Huey Lewis Still Hasn’t Seen American Psycho Despite “Hip to Be Square” Scene appeared first on Consequence.

Huey Lewis’ music is featured prominently in American Psycho, but the musician says he still hasn’t seen the movie more than two decades later. He initially boycotted it over a press release claiming Huey Lewis and the News pulled “Hip to Be Square” from the soundtrack due to the film’s violence.

As Lewis explained in the latest episode of Mark Hoppus’ After School Radio on Apple Music Hits, he had read Bret Easton Ellis’ book that served as the source material for the Christian Bale-starring film and was happy to license “Hip to Be Square” for American Psycho. “When I read the book, it was like a review of art stuff,” Lewis said. “And not only us, but Phil Collins and Tina Turner, and man, he really knew his stuff, he got us pretty much correct.”

According to Lewis, his manager called him two weeks later and said they also wanted to put “Hip to Be Square” on the soundtrack with “one other song and then a bunch of source music.” The artist remembered questioning whether it was a good idea to “make our fans buy that for just that one song” and decided instead to politely decline.

In response, the team behind American Psycho put out a press release that Lewis disputes to this day. “On the eve of the release of the movie, they came out with a press release that went everywhere that said that Huey Lewis had seen the movie and it was so violent that he yanked his tune from the soundtrack, to pump up interest,” he recalled. “And that pissed me off frankly, so I boycotted the film. I’ve never seen the film, but I did see the clip when we lampooned it for Funny or Die.” However, he has seen the Broadway musical.

This isn’t the first time Lewis has spoken about deciding to boycott American Psycho over the press release. Back in 2013, he told the same story to Rolling Stone and said he “refused to watch it” but thought the “Hip to Be Square” scene was great when he checked it out for the Funny or Die skit.

In the aforementioned scene, Bale’s Patrick Bateman waxes poetic about Huey Lewis and The News’ 1987 album, Fore, and describes “Hip to Be Square” as “not just about the pleasures of conformity, and the importance of trends, it’s also a personal statement about the band itself!” Revisit it below.

Last November, Huey Lewis and the News sold the majority of their catalog for $20 million. Lewis has retired from touring after being diagnosed with the inner-ear disorder Ménière’s disease in 2018. The band’s latest album was 2020’s Weather, which Lewis implied is his last release. Revisit our 2020 interview with Lewis on the This Must Be the Gig podcast.

 

Huey Lewis Still Hasn’t Seen American Psycho Despite “Hip to Be Square” Scene
Eddie Fu

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