Songfacts®:

• Doo-wop and drum machines don't usually mix, but they do on "Bad Is Bad," a track from Huey Lewis & the News' third album, Sports.
  
  Lewis wrote the song when he was in his previous band, Clover. It was a shuffle, but when he worked it up with Huey Lewis & the News, their saxophone player Johnny Colla, who is also their vocal arranger, thought it would work well as an a cappella. They sang it that way, giving it a doo-wop feel, but the band was also experimenting with a LinnDrum, which had recently gone on the market. They ended up adding an instrumental backing with the Linn providing the percussion, creating a very unusual sound.
  
  "We added the drum machine, so the first beats of the song are LinnDrum, so it sounds almost techno," Huey Lewis said in a Songfacts interview. "And then the doo-wop stuff comes in, so it's kind of the old and the new at once."
• According to Lewis, he wrote the song himself but shared the writer's credits with all members of the band Clover because that was their protocol. One of those members is keyboard player Sean Hopper, who came over with Lewis in Huey Lewis & the News. Another is Alex Call, who went on to write the Huey Lewis & the News hit "Perfect World."
• The lyric is a play on the alternate meaning of "bad" as used to describe something good. Musicians use it a lot in this context (that is one bad drummer).
  
  But sometimes, bad is just bad. In the song, Huey Lewis describes a few scenarios where this is true:
  
  His cousin, who is a terrible guitar player.
  
  The $1.99 chili.
  
  When he visits his girl and sees a strange pair of shoes under the bed.
• This was one of just four songs on the Sports album that wasn't released as a single, but they often played it live, with most of the band coming to the front of the stage to sing the harmony vocals with Lewis.
• Even though it wasn't a single, "Bad Is Bad" got a music video. The band was big on MTV and figured out how to make compelling videos early on, sometimes directing them on their own. That's what they did with "Bad Is Bad," which opens with the band emerging from behind a garbage truck in San Francisco and follows them along as they wander around the city.