Songfacts®:

• "Heart And Soul" was written by the team of Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn, the team responsible for high-energy hits like "Mickey" for Toni Basil and "Ballroom Blitz" by Sweet. Filled with catchy riffs and lusty lyrics you'll remember the first time though ("If it got hot and hectic, I know she'd be electric..."), it was the lead single from Sports, the third album from Huey Lewis & the News. As expected, it delivered, climbing to #8 in the US and setting up Sports to be a defining album of the '80s, with four more hits: "I Want A New Drug," "The Heart of Rock & Roll," "If This Is It" and "Walking On A Thin Line."
• This song was originally recorded by the band Exile as the title track to their 1981 album. Exile had a #1 hit in 1978 with another Chapman/Chinn song, "Kiss You All Over," so expectations were high for "Heart And Soul," but their version stalled at #102 in America.
  
  The song's publisher didn't give up on it though, and pitched it to other bands, including Huey Lewis & the News. The publisher failed to mention that the song had already been released.
  
  "I heard the song from a publisher and said, 'Wow. This is a great demo,'" Huey Lewis said in a Songfacts interview. "Well, it turns out it was Mike Chapman's production of Exile – a record."
  
  It got worse: The BusBoys also recorded the song, releasing their version in 1982.
  
  "I'm mixing the song in LA, I go to the bathroom, and in the studio right next door comes the same song!" Lewis added. "It's the BusBoys cutting 'Heart and Soul!' He'd pitched it to them too. I listened to it and I thought, Ah, I still think our version is a little better, so I hung with it. But needless to say, I was not very pleased with my publisher."
  
  The BusBoys' version didn't have much impact, so most listeners didn't know the Huey Lewis & the News rendition is a cover.
• According to Huey Lewis, the song was written for a female artist, with the gender flipped in the lyrics so the girl was welcoming a gentleman caller:
  
  If he should come a calling
  I couldn't dream of turning him away
• Huey Lewis & the News wrote most of their own songs and did their own production at this time, but they were laser focused on landing some hits, so they accepted songs from outside writers in some cases. The group's first album was released in 1980 and flopped hard, so they needed a hit to stay afloat. They found it in "Do You Believe In Love?," written by Mutt Lange, producer for AC/DC and Def Leppard.
  
  That got them above water, but they wanted to stay there, so they took "Heart And Soul."
• Exile's original version has a 30-second intro and starts with the line, "4 o'clock this morning." The Huey Lewis & the News version cuts the intro to 15 seconds to make it more radio friendly, and sets the scene earlier, a 2 o'clock in the morning.
• The music video, directed by David Rathod, finds Lewis, dressed in his usual suit and tie, entering a party where he's way out of place - everyone looks like they should be in a Pat Benatar video. But he catches the eye of a lovely lady and they leave together after a finding a door that lets them out and isn't a portal to another dimension.
• The girl in the video is Signy Coleman, who is from San Francisco and had seen Lewis perform in his earlier band, Clover. She was told to dress like a punk rocker for the audition, but instead went with a miniskirt and high heels. She was also trained as a dancer, so she got the gig.
  
  Coleman was then cast in the "I Want A New Drug" video as the object of desire.
• The band found different ways to distinguish their songs. On "Heart And Soul," they used hand claps throughout the bridge, making it hard not to clap along when the song comes on the radio.
  
  "We used hand claps a lot in the early days and it just seemed like a nice way to cut up that break," Lewis told Songfacts.