Songfacts®:

• This song is about an American soldier who is trained as a sniper in the Vietnam War and must face his demons when he returns home. It was written by Andre Pessis and Kevin Wells; in 2008, Pessis told a group of students about this song when he was a guest speaker for Pyramind Sound. In the late '60s, Pessis paid a young Huey Lewis $20 to record a demo of "Walking on a Thin Line," which he wrote for a documentary of that name about the Vietnam War. The song wasn't used in the movie, but many years later became a hit for Lewis when he recorded it for the Sports album.
  
  Pessis went on to write the Mr. Big songs "Just Take My Heart" and "Ain't Seen Love Like That." Wells was the drummer in Huey Lewis' pre-News band, Clover.
• While this song has the slick, horn-inflected pop sound responsible for many Huey Lewis & the News hits, the lyrical content is strikingly different from any of their other hits, most of which cover topics like love ("The Power of Love") and leisure ("Couple Days Off"). Many assumed Lewis was singing in metaphor on lines like:
  
  Taught me how to shoot to kill
  A specialist with a deadly skill
  A skill I needed to have to be a survivor
• Lewis has a strong connection to this song. "I had a lot of pals who went to Vietnam," he told Billboard. "It was a whole different era, how vets were treated when they came back. It was a highly unpopular war, and the public unfortunately took it out on a lot of the vets, and that's what the song is about."
  
  Other songs on the same topic include "Born In The U.S.A." by Bruce Springsteen and "Still in Saigon" by The Charlie Daniels Band.
• This was the last of five US singles from the Sports album, which was released in September 1983. The band was a constant presence on radio throughout 1984, with the hit singles released about three months apart. "Walking On A Thin Line" reached its chart peak on December 8, 1984. Their next single was "The Power of Love" from the movie Back To The Future, which was a #1 hit in the summer of 1985.