Huey Lewis & The News - The Heart Of Rock & Roll

What this video is

Released in 1984 as the third single from the blockbuster album Sports, 'The Heart of Rock & Roll' arrived at the precise moment MTV was reshaping how mainstream America consumed rock music. The video's multi-city structure — shot across New York City, Los Angeles, and incorporating on-tour footage — embodied the song's lyrical argument that rock and roll's vitality was geographically distributed across America,…

Why it matters

The video is a landmark document of mid-80s mainstream American rock's MTV assimilation — demonstrating how arena-rock acts could leverage the new video format without abandoning their working-class, performance-first identity. Its hybrid concert-doc-plus-skit structure became a recognizable…

The director

Edward Mori Griles (November 18, 1945 – October 22, 2024) was a New York-born American music video director and television producer. After graduating from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, he began his career in advertising at DDB Worldwide in…