Post by Kaz ~;~ on Dec 27, 2009 13:36:36 GMT -5
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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. Daryl Hall was the tall, blond lead vocalist, John Oates the mustachioed Gabe Kaplan look-alike, and together they pursued the mellow R&B sound of the Stylistics or the Chi-Lites, although they were initially lumped together with '70s soft-rock duos such as Seals & Crofts, En gland Dan & John Ford Coley, and the Captain & Tennille. Their early hits were love-bead ballads such as "She's Gone" (one of their few actual harmony duets) and "Sara Smile" (better than Starship's "Sara," not as good as Dylan's, about even with Fleetwood Mac's). Hall & Oates became stars in 1977 with the excellent "Rich Girl," which set a new standard for AM radio profanity by hitting #1 and repeating the word pregnant dog 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 soft-rock minor leagues.
Voices was the album that turned Hall & Oates into a hit machine. It wasn't any 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 H2O, easily their most consistently hooky albums, and scored hit after hit: "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 by the purr of a Jag-u-ar." Big Bam Boom found the boys slipping a bit, with echoey production to hide the slackened songcraft, but "Out of Touch" did provide a serial-monogamy credo for the '80s: "Smoking guns, hot to the touch/We'd cool down if we didn't use 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 and Keith Sweat. "Everything Your Heart Desires" was their last big hit; after that, they settled for a low-key presence, occasionally record-ing minor hits such as the pleasant "Promise Ain't Enough." Oates' solo career peaked with the title of his 2002 album, Funk 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 have called the song "I've Got a Philly Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder." 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.
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