Day 180: Hall & Oates – Private Eyes
I recently saw an article where John Oates said that people should give up hope that Hall & Oates will ever do a reunion because that is just not going to happen. I vaguely knew that they were beefing but I didn’t know the specifics, so I thought I’d get into it, because if there’s one thing that I love, it’s mess.
Album cover courtesy of Sony Music Entertainment
Hall & Oates were formed in Pennsylvania after the duo met at a band competition in 1967 and found out that they liked the same stuff. They ended up becoming great friends and roommates, and they got their name from having “Hall & Oates” on the mailbox. They worked together for 50 years, creating a catalogue of 17 albums with lots of iconic hits.
Private Eyes was released in 1981, and it featured some of their bigger hits like “Private Eyes” and “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do)”. It’s pretty classic ‘80s power pop with synths that’s honestly very solid, but there’s no clear standout track on it for me. “Head Above Water” and “Tell Me What You Want” are probably my favourites, but “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do)” is pretty hard to beat. Yet nothing on the album is better than their finest work. But to be fair, “Maneater” is one of the greatest pop songs of all time, and even when they’re only good, Hall & Oates are still pretty great.
There’s not a whole lot of information about what kind of thing led to their rift, which I think is a good thing, but we know that it culminated in a lawsuit. Oates tried to sell of his shares of their company, Whole Oats Enterprises LLP, and Hall says he was blindsided by the move, so he sued. But they’d clearly had issues before, as Hall said on a podcast appearance in 2022 that they have no creative partnership: “He’s my business partner. He’s not my creative partner … We made records called Hall & Oates together, but we’ve always been very separate, and that’s a really important thing for me.”
There’s something magnetic about having these two people who have had such a lucrative creative thing going but such a terrible relationship. Imagine you found the Lennon to your McCartney and unfortunately you ended up fucking hating the guy – it sounds like some sort of a curse by an entity that tells riddles. Maybe Hall or Oates met Mephistopheles and made a pact to make bangers at the price of their peace of mind, I don’t know. But it’s fascinating.
Before Oasis got back together, Matty Healy from the 1975 said it’s embarrassing for them to be in the coolest band in the world but not make music because they’re in a fight, saying “Grow up. Headline Glastonbury.” Normally that’s sage advice, but with these two, when they’re publicly saying things like “That ship has gone to the bottom of the ocean,” I just think maybe it’s fine that they just leave it. At the end of the day, why should you waste your twilight years with someone you don’t even like? I say good for them.
Some things are best left as is. Like the old Live Laugh Love-adage says, don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened. Private Eyes is an 8.5/10. RIP Hall & Oates, long live Daryl Hall and John Oates.