Hit Parade: Rock ’n Soul, Part 2

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4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 January 2022

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In part two of our deep dive into Daryl Hall & John Oates' genre-defying streak on the pop charts, Chris Molanphy argues they were also more cutting-edge than you may realize, essentially inventing their own form of cross-racial new wave after spending the ’70s trying everything: rock, R&B, folk, funk, even disco. At their Imperial peak in the early ’80s, Hall and Oates commanded the pop, soul and dance charts while still getting played on rock stations. And decades later, when the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ignored them, it was Black artists—rappers and soul fans—who pushed them in. Join Chris Molanphy for a dissection of the Philly duo who invented “rock ’n soul” and made their dreams come true. Sign up for Slate Plus now to get episodes in one installment as soon as they're out. You'll also get The Bridge, our trivia show and bonus deep dive. Click here for more info. Podcast production by Asha Saluja. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate magazine about
0:09.1	the hits from Coast to Coast.
0:11.0	I'm Chris Malanfi, Chart Analyst, Pop Critic, and writer of Slates Why Is This Song No.
0:16.4	1 series.
0:17.6	On our last episode, we talked about how Daryl Hall and John Oates met in the Philly
0:23.6	Soul Scene of the 1960s, then spent the 70s trying to find their sound, veering from
0:30.9	folk to R&B, to rock, to disco, with major chart highs and humbling lows, where now at
0:38.9	the start of the 1980s, where Hall and Oates are finally honing their voice on an album
0:46.3	called, appropriately, Voices.
0:56.9	Very deep on the Voices LP, Kiss On My List was anomalous in several ways.
1:04.1	For one thing, it was co-written by Daryl Hall, not with his companion Sarah Allen, but with
1:10.4	her sister, Jana Allen, another budding songwriter who was looking to start her own music
1:17.4	career.
1:18.4	Daryl helped Jana complete the song, but Jana came up with the song's infectious chorus
1:25.0	on her own.
1:36.3	And about that chorus, the word in the title is, Kiss On My List, Not Lips.
1:44.2	Though many listeners mistook it for lips, the song was perceived as purely romantic, whereas
1:51.7	Daryl Hall claimed it was an anti-love song, sung by a dude who's sheepish about sharing
1:58.3	his feelings, quote, if you insist on knowing my bliss, or I only smile when I lie.
2:06.6	He finally owns up that a kiss is just one of the things on his list of life's joys.
2:14.0	It didn't matter.
2:15.7	Kiss On My List was received as a breezy, easy peon to infatuation.
	...

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