Rock ’n Soul, Part 1

Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia

Slate Podcasts

Music, Music History, Music Commentary

4.8 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 January 2022

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Daryl Hall and John Oates: Their songs were earworms, their videos cheap and goofy. John Oates’s mustache and Daryl Hall’s mullet are relics of their time. And…for about five years, their crazy streak on the pop charts was comparable to Elvis, the Beatles and the Bee Gees. 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	Hey there, Hit Parade listeners, what you're about to hear is part one of this episode.
0:06.0	Part two will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month.
0:10.0	Would you like to hear this episode all at once the day it drops?
0:14.0	Sign up for Slate Plus.
0:16.1	You can try it for a month for just one dollar,
0:19.2	and it supports not only this show, but all of Slates acclaimed journalism and podcasts.
0:25.5	Just go to slate.com slash Hit Parade Plus.
0:29.4	You'll get to hear every Hit Parade episode in full the day it arrives.
0:34.1	Plus Hit Parade, the bridge, are bonus episodes with guest interviews,
0:39.2	deeper dives on our episode topics, and pop chart trivia.
0:43.3	Once again, to join that's Slate.com slash Hit Parade Plus.
0:48.5	Thanks, and now please enjoy part one of this Hit Parade episode.
0:59.5	Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate magazine.
1:07.9	About the hits from coast to coast, I'm Chris Mulanfee,
1:11.6	chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slates why is this song number one series?
1:16.9	On today's show, 40 years ago this week, in January of 1982,
1:23.2	America had a new number one song built out of a cutting-edge digital
1:28.8	rhythm track. It sounded both frigid and fiery,
1:32.7	with icy, fluttery keyboards, and a sizzling baseline.
1:37.2	It was chilled out, but club ready, a perfect pop song to liven the dead of winter.
1:48.5	The same week, it topped Billboard's Hot 100 Pop Chart.
1:52.4	The song also rose to number one on Billboard's Hot Soul singles chart,
	...

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