defend the indefensible: Hall and Oates

omg that Chromeo clip was fkn awesome :D

hot shit

anyone hear what happened that caused the postponement of the rest of the tour? there was a 'family emergency' in Tears for Fears camp; rumors they have cancelled; Roland Orzabal deleted his twitter account, and no one saying anything.

yeah idk

backup singer carina round was super-duper pregnant when i saw them the other night & i initially wondered if it was something to do with that but yeah, no idea

she's fine, she's still on FB. she's due in a month or something I believe. it was something to do with curt or roland. curt posted on twitter

https://twitter.com/curtsmith?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

If i had to morbidly guess, it would be that something happened to Orzabal's wife or children.

oh that link didn't do anything

I am home. I know there are many questions, but I ask that you respect the privacy of those affected at this time. Much love ❤️ pic.twitter.com/5kWTVJbZDy

— Curt Smith (@curtsmith) July 26, 2017

:(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc0Gp-jX-Wk

hah i just watched that. wish there were more than 3 examples with a title like "every hit song".

saw the Behind the Music on them recently and it was pretty good. they seem like real down to Earth dudes, maybe even a little embarassed at the kitsch, but all about the music. seeing Daryl Hall plink away funky lines on his home keyboard kinda brings these larger than life pop hits down to Earth. and lol at John Oates being like "I'm not regrowing a mustache because of some stupid internet cartoon"

lol @ 'indefensible.' i know this thread was started 14 years ago, but still- got one of their 2xLP greatest hits comps for my birthday late last year, and it's just unimpeachable. Speaks for itself. a funny memory- just a month earlier, my cousin got married, and after they exchanged vows & kissed, a Hall & Oates song came over the PA, and my dad and I looked at each other like "what the fuck?" because we were sure it was "Rich Girl." I forgot how similar the intros of that song and "You Make My Dreams Come True" are.

the first minute of "I Can't Go For That" is pop alchemy, stands in rarefied air

I interviewed Darryl in the summer of 2001 (forgive me if I've mentioned this before), and he was dead serious about the music (as he should be, their music is GRATE), but when I asked him about if they indulged in the naughty stuff of their era he was like, "Come on man, you saw the clothes we wore back then, of course we did drugs"

"Private Eyes" is possibly the most upbeat, endearing songs about coke paranoia ever.

Their hippitude/marketability is only deepening - I just heard "War Baby Son of Zorro" at Warby Parker.

Heard "I Can't Go for That" at Sprouts recently. Had trouble holding still.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_University

And the last photo on the page is Hall & Oates.

― _Rudipherous_, Sunday, June 11, 2017 7:55 AM (seven months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The point being that it is such a Philadelphia thing. My father, my brother and I already went to Temple.

So, this thread was started in 2004... has the whole poptimism movement shifted the definition of 'indefensible' in the intervening 14 years?
I just can't see someone starting this thread in 2018.

But lots of people thought H&O were defensible in 2004, 1994, and 1984.

OP was very much out of sync with ILM tastes iirc

yes

the 21st century revival of hall and oates had already started by at least 2003 iirc because this was when i got into them and i didn't get into them because i was deep diving for 80s pop, i definitely encountered them in pop culture/hearing their songs incidentally in my life

IIRC the motion was famous and globally successful > dormant but not unloved > respected and sampled > loved unapologetically.

Both Daryl and John played it pretty well in their own ways. D. himself is now almost overexposed, and sometimes verges on cornball. But the body of work is unimpeachable.

On that pestilential Righteous Bros cover.

never cared much for the original

Impeccable pitch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeAkYS9WqrM&fbclid=IwAR3pPuYDmF-XOzQf5XJiRFLLKLdSxmWmmqB2MELDe0pirmBkLqPaJv6-C7M

link appears broken

works for me, unless you meant it is broken because it's missing the backing track. one of my go-to songs at karaoke

Let's try it again:

https://youtu.be/AeAkYS9WqrM

Nice.

I don't think I ever heard Method of Modern of Love on the radio. What a shame

"Adult Education" fuckin' rocks. There's nothing wrong with Hall & Oates, apart from John Oates' mustache.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Friday, January 2, 2004 2:04 AM (fifteen years ago)

I hope you were caught up in a wave of reckless abandon from early days of ILX and have since then recanted your opinion regarding Oates’ mustache.

don't trash the 'stache

In retrospect, Oates looks way better *WITH* the stache than without.

Lyrics to ‘Adult Education’ seem a bit crepey in retrospect - what exactly is going on in that song?

the high point of low school is getting out of there

Discussed with a pal more musically astute than I that "Kiss on Your List" is one of the most dramatic examples of the parallel major in pop music I have ever heard, at least since the Baroque pop of the '60s (a la " Happy Together").

such a beautiful song

Craig Jenkins interview:

Best album you ever made

There are parts of many of them that I think are the best parts, but I don’t think there is one best Hall & Oates album. Truthfully, the most impactful albums to me are my solo albums. They’re the ones that matter the most to me because I liked the people I worked with. My favorite albums I’ve ever done are Three Hearts in the Happy Ending Machine with Dave Stewart and the Sacred Songs album with Robert Fripp. I find no fault with either of those albums. With Hall & Oates, there are a lot of songs I would redo.

https://www.vulture.com/2021/08/hall-and-oates-daryl-hall-interview.html

nice. i love ghetto smile too.

I know Sacred Songs, that is a nice one. I always wished Fripp released an all-Hall Exposure as he originally planned, but he did do a great job of turning a drawback into an advantage with the new vocalists he recruited.

There's no Hall & Oates album that I like start-to-finish - in the past, Hall mentioned that Abandoned Luncheonette was his favorite but stipulated "with side two, if I could change anything, I’d just get rid of all that (production) crap and let the songs be the songs," and I'm pretty much in agreement. I do think they come off great in a well-curated compilation.

AL has my favorite Oates material.

Yeah, side one is pretty great. I'm partial to the Philly soul records they made with Atlantic - even the three leftovers included on the No Goodbyes compilation are gems.

I own the '09 box set, and it includes stuff like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSUzITRBUbw

Yeah, there's one of them! For a while that box set was the only place they ever issued that song on CD, at least in the U.S. "It's Uncanny" and "I Want to Know You for a Long Time" are the other two off of No Goodbyes.

This was hilarious:

"Robert bloody fucking Christgau gave Abandoned Luncheonette a C. (Ed. note: It was a B-.) One of the great albums of the ’70s. So there you go. What an asshole."

Christgau wasn't crazy about them - the best he gave them was a B+, and that was only on two compilations.

I like war babies all the way through. and I’ve meekly defended ooh! yeah on here before.

No can do.

This cracks me up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh5f-_I1df4

The concept of Hall & Oates being indefensible is indefensible itself.

Hall & Oates were a perfectly acceptable pop act when I was 11 or so. I liked one or two of their songs, and disliked others. This persistent idea that they were anything more than replacement-level chart pop (which, honestly, I have never encountered outside ILX) is baffling.

“Out of Touch” is surely one of my top 20 songs of the 80’s, if I ever made such a list.