Hall & Oates

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Hall & Oates

Hall & Oates

Hall & Oates, the most commercially successful boy-boy duo of the rock & roll era, began in Philadelphia as a pair of soulful folkies, or perhaps folkful soulies. Darry Hall was the tall blond lead vocalist, John Oates the mustachioed Gary Dell'Abate look-alike, and together they pursued the mellow R&B sound. Although they were initially lumped together with '70s soft-rock duos such as Seals & Crofts and the like; and although it's easy to see why, well, with their early hits were love-bead ballads such as "She's Gone" (one of the few actual harmony duets). Hall & Oates became stars in 1977 with the excellent "Rich Girl," which set a new standard for AM radio profanity by (1) hitting #1 and (2) repeating the word bitch three times. Mystery surrounded them: Were Daryl and John lovers? Was "Rich Girl" secretly about Bryan Ferry? What did Oates do exactly? But they couldn't follow it up, and soon descended back into the sock-rock minor leagues. 

Voices was the album that turned Hall & Oates into a hit machine It wasn't anymore more solid than Along the Red Ledge or X-Static, with an awful cover of "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling." But it did have "Kiss on My List," a slick, bouncy #1 synth-pop smooch that taught Hall & Oates the way to make rock girls, disco girls, and new-wave girls scream together. Wasting no time, they banged out Private Eyes and H₂0, easily their most consistently hooky albums, and scored the band hits after hits: "Did It in a Minute, "You Make My Dreams," "Private Eyes," "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)," and "Head Above Water," the catchiest song on Private Eyes although it was never a single. They still had a weakness for boring ballads ("One on One"), but redeemed themselves with sick thrills such as "Maneater," which warned about "a she-cat tamed bu the purr of a Jag-u-ar." Big Bam Boom found the boys slipping a bit, with echoey production to hide the slackened song-craft, but "Out of Touch" did prove a serial-monogamy credo for the '80s: "Smoking guns, hot to the touch/ We'd cool down if we didn't us them so much."

Hall & Oates went on hiatus for a few years, returning with Ooh Yeah! in the summer of 1988. But they quickly found that relying on the old man;s money was a lot easier than relying on the young girls' money, because their entire fan base had moved on to Bobby Brown. "Everything Your Heart Desires" was their last big hit; after that, they settle for a low-key presence, occasionally recording minor hits such as the pleasant "Promise Ain't Enough." Oates' solo career peaks with the title of his 2002 album, Phunk Sui; Hall's peaked with his 1993 hit "I'm in a Philly Mood," although he'd been in a Philly mood for the entirety of his career, and therefore perhaps should called the song, "I've Got the Philly Obsessive-Compulsive Blues." By now, we all know that Daryl and John were not actually lovers; however, that leaves the question of what Oates did as mysterious as ever.