Huey Lewis performing live on stage in 2013, fist raised

Huey Lewis Says He Can’t Hear Music Anymore. We Can Still Hear Him Everywhere.

Q: Can Huey Lewis still hear music?

No. In a July 2026 appearance on the Inside of You podcast, Lewis said he can no longer hear music at all, and that music is not part of his life anymore. His cochlear implant lets him follow conversation but makes music sound distorted.

Q: What were Huey Lewis and the News' biggest 80s hits?

The album Sports (1983) hit No. 1 and produced Heart and Soul, I Want a New Drug, The Heart of Rock and Roll, and If This Is It. The Power of Love from Back to the Future was a No. 1 hit in 1985, and Fore! (1986) delivered Stuck with You, Hip to Be Square, and Jacob's Ladder.

July 10, 2026

By Bobby Catalano & Jason Pascoe·We were on Dance Party USAWe lived this decade in real time, some of it on national TV. The feel is memory. The facts are research, checked against the record.

This one hurts, so we are just going to say it straight.

Huey Lewis went on Michael Rosenbaum’s “Inside of You” podcast this week (July 7, 2026) and said the words nobody who grew up in the 80s ever wanted to hear: “At a certain point, you gotta face the music. I can’t hear music.” His hometown paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, picked it up, and then everyone else did, because when the man who sang “The Heart of Rock & Roll” says music is no longer part of his life, that lands right in your chest.

Meniere’s disease took his hearing. It did not take his catalog, his place in our heads, or what he meant to every kid within reach of a radio between 1983 and 1988. So here is what he said, what led up to it, and why Huey Lewis and the News mattered so much to our corner of the decade. Consider this our thank-you card.

What Huey said this week

Talking to Rosenbaum just after his 76th birthday, Huey laid it out with the same no-nonsense delivery he always had. “Music is not part of my life anymore, which is a hard pill to swallow,” he said. He has a cochlear implant now, and it helps him follow conversation, but it distorts voices and music alike. “I can’t feel the warmth, you know?”

He said he is mildly dizzy all the time. He said he no longer plays the big band and New Orleans jazz records he loves around the house, because they do not sound like themselves anymore. He admitted he is a little envious of his bandmates, who still get to go out and play. And then, because he is Huey Lewis, he steered it back to gratitude: the fishing trips, the friendships, the whole unbelievable ride. His words: he has to look at the positive.

How we got here: the timeline

This did not happen overnight. Huey actually lost most of the hearing in his right ear decades ago, around the end of the 80s. He shrugged it off in public for years, and in a 2024 radio interview he summed up Meniere’s the way only he could: “You get vertigo and you lose your hearing, but what you gonna do?” That quote is the whole man in one sentence.

The left ear was the one carrying him. Then one night in Dallas in early 2018, right before showtime, it crashed. He described the lower frequencies distorting so violently that he could not find pitch, and you cannot sing if you cannot find pitch. In April 2018 he canceled all 40 remaining tour dates, telling fans he could no longer hear music well enough to sing. He has not played a full show since. He told Today back then that he spent months trying everything: doctors, diets, acupuncture, all of it.

The story did not stop there, though. The band released the album Weather in 2020, built from songs he recorded before Dallas. His jukebox musical The Heart of Rock and Roll made it all the way to Broadway in 2024. And in a 2025 interview with People he talked about the cochlear implant, hearing speech better, and refusing to slam the door shut: “I’m not going to give up.”

What Huey Lewis meant to the 80s

Everything. OK, here is the longer version.

Huey Lewis and the News were the American bar band that made it all the way to the top without ever pretending to be anything else. No costumes, no fog machines, no mystique. A Bay Area working band in sport coats, with a harmonica, a horn section, and songs your whole family agreed on. In a decade full of characters, Huey’s whole thing was being the regular guy, and it turned out the regular guy could go toe to toe with anybody.

Sports came out in September 1983 and simply refused to leave. It climbed all the way to No. 1 in 1984 and threw off four straight top-10 singles: “Heart and Soul,” “I Want a New Drug,” “The Heart of Rock & Roll,” and “If This Is It.” Seven times platinum, in the era of Thriller. Every one of those songs still starts a party.

Then came 1985. “The Power of Love” became his first No. 1 and got an Oscar nomination, welded forever to Back to the Future. Huey even has a cameo in the movie as the audition judge who rejects Marty McFly’s band for being “just too darn loud,” while the band is playing a Huey Lewis song. Still one of the great inside jokes of the decade. That same year he sang his line on “We Are the World,” standing shoulder to shoulder with every giant in American music.

Fore! landed in August 1986 and went to No. 1 too, with “Stuck with You,” “Hip to Be Square,” and “Jacob’s Ladder” all hitting the top of the charts. And that summer of 1986 is exactly where our story plugs in, because those records were everywhere while we were dancing on Dance Party USA. That run of songs was the air we breathed in that studio. You did not put on Huey Lewis to be cool. You put on Huey Lewis because it made the whole room happy, which we would argue is the harder trick.

We made a whole video about this band

We already made our feelings a matter of public record. We sat down and did an entire episode on what this band meant to us and to those 80s summers, and it is one of our favorite things we have ever put on YouTube:

Watch: “For the Love of Huey Lewis and the News” on our YouTube channel

Go watch it. It was true when we filmed it and it is even more true today.

Play it loud enough for both of you

Huey says he has to face the music. Fair enough. But somebody should tell him the music is doing just fine out here. “If This Is It” still works in three notes. “Stuck with You” still sounds like a summer with nothing to do and nowhere to be. The heart of rock and roll is, in fact, still beating, and he is the reason a few million of us can check.

So here is our prescription, and we are only half kidding: put on Sports today, front to back, loud. He cannot hear it anymore. Play it loud enough for both of you.

Bobby and Jason

FAQ

What happened to Huey Lewis’s hearing?
Huey Lewis has Meniere’s disease, an inner-ear condition that causes vertigo and progressive hearing loss. He lost most of the hearing in his right ear around the end of the 80s, and his left ear failed suddenly before a show in Dallas in early 2018. He now describes his hearing as essentially gone, and a cochlear implant helps him with speech but distorts music.

Can Huey Lewis still hear music?
No. In a July 2026 appearance on the “Inside of You” podcast, Lewis said he can no longer hear music at all, and that music is not part of his life anymore. His cochlear implant lets him follow conversation but makes music sound distorted.

When did Huey Lewis stop performing?
In April 2018, Lewis canceled all 40 of his remaining tour dates after his hearing crashed before a Dallas show, saying he could no longer hear well enough to sing. He has not performed a full concert since.

What were Huey Lewis and the News’ biggest 80s hits?
The album Sports (1983) hit No. 1 and produced “Heart and Soul,” “I Want a New Drug,” “The Heart of Rock & Roll,” and “If This Is It.” “The Power of Love” from Back to the Future was a No. 1 hit in 1985, and Fore! (1986) delivered “Stuck with You,” “Hip to Be Square,” and “Jacob’s Ladder.”

Sources

Photos: Tankboy from Chicago (CC BY-SA 2.0), Xnux (CC BY-SA 3.0), and PaulHamaker (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons.