Daryl Hall & John Oates - The standard-bearers of blue-eyed soul

In the late Sixties, Daryl Hall and John Oates were two friends attending Temple University in Philadelphia. Daryl, the local of the two, was already the leader of the band Gulliver (s/t, 1970, Elektra), but had also recorded as "Daryl Hall with The Cellar Door". His parallel work as a session man and vocalist for top soul groups like the Delfonics and the Stylistics would prove enormously useful to his development as a songwriter. John was born in New York, but as a child moved with his family to Pennsylvania. He was a great collector of rhythm and blues records and could handle a guitar well enough that, in 1966, college radio was already playing one of his singles, "I Need Your Love", which gave him the push to make music his profession. Philadelphia was already the city where the future protagonists of philly soul were quietly honing their craft ahead of the following decade, so it's no surprise the duo was deeply influenced by the Black musical aura permeating that place.

In 1972 Hall and Oates signed to the Atlantic label and released their debut Whole Oats, a title that plays on the assonance of their names (a useful pre-debut anthology is Past Times Behind 1969-72).

Few people took notice of this raw but promising album at first. Yet, on the soul-folk side, it timidly reveals the melodic songwriting potential that would make the duo famous within a few seasons.

The seeds that would lead to the following year's Abandoned Luncheonette (1973) were already being planted.

In the meantime, Whole Oats can be appreciated as an appetizer, especially in the fledgling Everly Brothers-style vocal interplay of two white musicians emulating Black singers, and in Daryl Hall's first hook-laden melodies – "Georgie", "Fall In Philadelphia", "Goodnight and Goodmorning" – impeccably produced by the great Arif Mardin (the record executive and producer who worked with so many artists, including Aretha Franklin, Donny Hathaway, Dusty Springfield, Laura Nyro, Diana Ross).

If "Southeast City Window" sounds like James Taylor from a mile off, "Lazyman" is the first example of a voice-and-piano ballad by Daryl Hall, a format that would go on to yield excellent results; and then there's "Lilly (Are You Happy)" waiting at the tail end of the record, an enticing pop romance in the style of Carole King, built on cascading strings and exultant, intoxicated choruses (“Are you tired of giving Lilly? /Are you really happy?”), as close to the philly-sound atmospheres as to the contemporary Elton John of "Yellow Brick Road".

We thus arrive at Abandoned Luncheonette (1973, Atlantic, reissued 1990), a tremendous and underrated soul-pop album of the Seventies. So much so that anyone who traces the roots of modern white soul back to Bowie's "Young Americans" will need to push their timeline back two years, simply by listening to the opening chords of the opening track "When The Morning Comes", or the rocking ballad "Lady Rain".

Once again produced by the great Arif Mardin, this is the album where everything comes together beautifully. The instrumental harmonies and velvety vocal arrangements possess a maturity and a precious quality, a primal value, in a concept that is at once imaginary and concretely immersive, amplified by memory and the nostalgia of childhood.

Still shell-shocked reflections on where missteps lead, catching a young man unprepared, changes hard to accept: "Had I know you better then…"

Songs like "Las Vegas Turnaround" linger on this mood, sinuous and polished like a Bacharach number, its absorbed body lit up by the vocal interplay of the two leads with countless splashes of colour, as does "I'm Just A Kid (Don't Make Me Feel Like A Man)", but above all "She's Gone". Because "She's Gone" is Hall & Oates' song, with the crooner disconsolately asking himself: "What went wrong…?". A sacrificed relationship, a life to start over, and an unanswered question thrown to the ground: why did it happen, what went wrong? In truth, everything here works wonderfully, from the initial subdued, almost whispered introspection to the painful crescendo of an inner vibration that refuses to hide itself. And one wanders barefoot and alone ("my face ain't looking any younger…"), shutting oneself away from the world inside abandoned little diners, swallowed up by vegetation. A pure allegory of a lacerated soul. The ecstasy of the sax solo and the tormented cry of the backing vocals echoes and drives home that she is gone. Like a trailing echo, Oates holds up his end of the game, a decisive counterpart, in the introspections of "I'm Just A Kid…", scented with Bill Withers-like unease.

In 1974 came War Babies (Atlantic, reissued 1998, 2008), on which Hall and Oates were joined by the young musician and producer Todd Rundgren, fresh off three acclaimed studio masterpieces ("Something/Anything" 1972, "A Wizard, A True Star" '73, "Todd" '74, Atlantic).

The potential is enormous, yet aside from the three musicians' flawless instrumental skills and sumptuous vocal harmonies, showing an enviable chemistry, the album lacks somewhat in songs. A sense of bitterness over an opportunity not fully seized is therefore inevitable, considering the presence of Rundgren, who, together with Alex Chilton of Big Star, was perhaps the most ingenious and brilliant pop writer around during 1972-74.

In this misstep, quickly filed away and forgotten, he imposes an excessive exuberance, overdoing it considerably. Unrecognizable and almost glam, Hall and Oates on "Is It A Star", "Screaming Through December" and "Son Of Zorro" turn the worn-out Luncheonette into a polished spaceship – but with a faulty engine. The keyboards and the big space-rock guitar riffs seem to come straight from the planet Utopia (the band Rundgren was putting together around that time).

The early Tubes would demolish this kind of showiness with scathing, irreverent irony ("The Tubes", 1975, "Young and Rich", 1976, A&M).

The more balanced tracks still hold up well, such as "Can't Stop The Music (He Played It Much Too Long)", the rock-soul drive of "You're Much Too Soon" and the mercurial rock ballad "70's Scenario".

By the mid-Seventies, a blue-eyed soul leap of faith would send Hall & Oates soaring toward a celestial Olympus, with a full awareness of a thoroughly modern, cutting-edge sound that would become their true trademark.

The season opens with a brand-new contract with RCA, hence the duo's apparent intention to start fresh with a new, "self-titled" album, a point zero, a regenerating fresh start. In reality, this fourth album is anything but a tabula rasa, but rather a pure and lucid synthesis of everything that was present in excess on "War Babies".

In short, Daryl Hall and John Oates (RCA, 1975, Buddha Records 2000 reissue) captures the best of what the duo's musical past had created.

The mood of the new direction that this and the following two albums would follow is a particular west-coast pop refinement that narcissistically extends and develops the intuitions of their earlier records. There's a lightness and a fullness of soul and funky feeling, soft, almost chamber-like instrumental tones and basslines, all aimed at maximum effect.

A sparse, subtle naiveté of voices and instruments spreads the melodies out, progressively lightening their weight.

From the very first moments, the listen turns into swirling choruses, amid string section and keyboards. In the studio is new producer Christopher Bond, who would accompany the duo across three albums. It should also be added that this is the record that gave us "Sara Smile", certainly one of the "dawning" love stories in Seventies pop that took thousands of listeners by the hand; one of the records that, more than anything in the wake of the Beatles, managed to get listeners talking to their own dreams, launching them toward hypotheses and utopias. And yet, "Sara Smile" gathers faithful images of scenes actually lived, fearful glances in the night, tender confessions between lovers. It's a song truly capable of making life more beautiful, like "I'm Not In Love" by 10cc, a timeless piece that, in its apparent simplicity and straightforward chord structure, reveals itself to be an authentic galaxy of meanings and feelings, and with every listen you keep discovering why.

It's a gem whose beauty deserves to be set apart, kept safe in a crystal case.

Instead, the other tracks — "Camelia", "Nothing At All", "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" (superb), "Soldering" (turning a blind eye to the questionable "Gino") — with their triumphant strings, their variety and fluidity of pop-soul idioms, their funk-rock syncopation and timbres and even touches of calypso, show that they live by no one else's reflected light; they're irresistibly soothing and confirm Daryl Hall as a precious songwriting talent. Oates's contributions are excellent too, a fundamental counterpart.

Bigger Than Both Of Us (1976, RCA, 2002 reissue) again has Bond producing, and reveals itself as another gem. The result of their first five years of collaboration is rewarded with a soul-pop tracklist of unmatched quality and impact. Where Abandoned Luncheonette was the passive, downcast album, here the air is entirely different: optimistic and sparkling. No less emotionally invested, but almost "staged" within the turquoise suite depicted on the cover.

The track that tops the charts this time is "Rich Girl", a delightfully intimate reprimand (“It’s so easy to hurt others when you can’t feel pain/ And don’t you know that a love can’t grow/ ‘Cause there’s too much to give”). Daryl Hall knows his particular gift as a seductive musician inside out, and here he puts it to its best use. "Back Together Again", "Crazy Eyes", "Do What You Want, Be What You Are", "Kerry" all reveal themselves as exemplary graces scattering pollen of the Philly sound, never separate from a rare, skillful, Beatles-like compositional and harmonic sense.

Intimate oases like "Falling" show, on the other hand, an absorbed soul purity.

That same year, Hall is in the studio with Ruth Copeland, an English-born, American-resident vocalist who shares a musical background with Daryl (white soul, funk) but not the same favorable fate. The collaboration results in the single "Heaven": a whole weave of passionate vocalizing bathed in strings and horns, the quintessence of the Motown sound; it appears as an outtake from Bigger Than Both Of Us.

Beauty On A Back Street (RCA 1977, 2008 reissue) echoes it. Sometimes labeled the duo's arena-rock record, it spotlights the cover of "Why Do Lovers Break Each Other's Hearts", a gem by Phil Spector/Bob B. Soxx, pure meta-commentary on vocal groups, the heroes of Sixties adolescents, our duo included. "Bad Habits And Infections" gives off a 10cc-like aroma.

Suddenly Daryl Hall and John Oates have become untouchable; the critics, incredulous, admit they'd lost or underrated a step or two, and rush to catch up. It's also time to take stock of what's been accomplished so far, with a pair of anthologies: the pre-debut Past Times Behind-1969-72 and No Goodbyes (1977, Atlantic, featuring three unreleased tracks). But the first live album also arrives: Livetime (1978, RCA, 2002 BMG reissue), a solid stage reconnaissance, with intriguing reimaginings of "Sara Smile" and "I'm Just A Kid", while "Rich Girl" melts into a cheerleader anthem, pure collective ecstasy. It's a shame the record is so short.

Following the release of Beauty... (1977), John Oates temporarily steps away from the project for reasons unrelated to music. In the summer of that year, for three weeks, Daryl Hall is in the recording studio, this time with Robert Fripp. With the King Crimson leader he shares a solid friendship and an unexpected musical affinity ("even though Robert is English and not from Philadelphia, and his roots aren't in the blues, his guitar speaks a soul language," Hall recalls). Fripp was looking for artistic rebirth, and after his sessions with Bowie on "Heroes", this collaboration arrives, yielding the solo album Sacred Songs (RCA, 1980, Buddha 1999 reissue), an extraordinary collection of feverish vocal duels and ravishing instrumental magic; a sort of rare artistic paradox that sparks a vibrant communion, an admirable "esoteric" tension, via pop-soul heterodoxies and wide-ranging rock avant-garde.

Like a magic bridge stretched between the old and new continent, this record would pay the toll for its own, however minimal, margin of risk, for its own unprecedented pedigree, finally being released whenever (and if) it suited the label best — that is, three years later, in the wake of the multi-million-selling Voices ("due to the decision of some cocaine-addled RCA executive, the release of the tapes remained frozen until 1980: the Buddha reissue contains a meticulous account of the whole affair and a lucid testimony signed by Fripp himself." Bruno Anastasi, Radiopeninsula).

There are so many memorable tracks, all of them unconventional and driven by a kind of free compulsion. Pop, yes, predominantly, but free and prescient, without formula or fixed time, where "the dualism between sacred and profane runs constant, between intuition and practice, between spiritual and carnal" (reissue liner notes).

"Something In 4/4 Time" is the best Hall & Oates song ever left in a drawer: a delightful, ironic pop-sixties banquet steeped in the oblique light of Fripp's guitar and immortalized in vocalizations of desire.

Likewise, "Why Was It So Easy" captivates instantly: it's romantic shipwreck and melancholic shiver; it's the longing, the comet's trail that Phil Collins would chase for an entire career; a matter of lineage, precisely.

"Babs And Babs" pours out masterful strokes of Gibson and Frippertronics loop-waves, like lysergic rainbow smoke scattered over a Mitteleuropean pop body; utopia was never so alluring.

On "NYCNY", Hall is in a trance induced by instrumental fervor; Fripp dawns in abrasive, violent jams, weaving patterns as if in the studio plotting further pages of "Red". It then veers into a mystical-neurotic dance, with keyboards à-la Rundgren, and closes in an exhilarating, hysterical ulcer of guitars.

Intriguing, in their alluring eclecticism, are the other tracks, "Farther Away I Am", "Don't Leave Me Alone With Her", "Survive", "Without Tears".

Sacred Songs is a masterpiece of an album that should be taught in schools. Robert Fripp would return the favor a few months later, inviting Hall to collaborate on his solo album "Exposure", released shortly after (1979, EG/Polydor, reissued 2008).

The following year, 1978, Hall and Oates once again released an album together, Along The Red Ledge (Rca, reissued 2008), a record of many faces. The two, ever more perfectionist, come across more than ever as musical "rivals" to one another. Each seems to freely pursue his own suggestions and obsessions without denying or getting in the way of the other, and the result is often effective. As melodic and spiritual as Hall is, as abrasive and concise Oates is; the oxymoron works. C. Bond and David Foster share production duties, with numerous musicians involved (Todd Rundgren, Robert Fripp, Elton John's band).

"It's a Laugh", "Melody For a Memory" and "Have Been Away For Too Long" voluptuously shape the grooves and, with the soft vocals of both protagonists, celebrate the gospel of soul, even beyond the usual standard. A tribute to Spector's wall of sound comes with "The Last Time", among Daryl's most emotional sentimental performances ("remember the look in your eyes... it really ripped me apart"): a chorus of intrigue and unease finally immerses the romantic obsession in a dazzling fade-out.

"Along..." doesn't lack a few gritty, convulsive hard-rock scratches. While "Alley Katz" is honestly a punch to the album's gut, things go better with "Serious Music" and "Don't Blame It On Love". The latter features a strange, dynamic Frippian guitar insert that foreshadows the futuristic "Discipline", which King Crimson would conceive shortly after.

A contagious carnival on "Pleasure Beach" then recalls the bittersweet nostalgia of Elton John's "Crocodile Rock": the band is in fact the same one (Kenny Passarelli, Roger Pope, Caleb Quaye, on bass, drums and guitar respectively), but the album's masterpiece lies in its own tail end, a personal and private reflection by Hall, rich with pictorial suggestions: the piano piece "August Day". A dawn of rising keyboards, an atmospheric narrative of astral texture, and a harmonica counterpointing with its free, insinuating waves, paving every horizon and soothing every pain.

“And the sky turned heavy grey/ August day“.

It's now the twilight of the Seventies; in '79 disco-music and so-called adult-oriented rock are raging. X-Static (Rca, Buddha Records 2000, reissued), which again sees David Foster producing, is influenced by this.

An attractive hybrid but lacking in focus: it's missing the interplay, the pure intrigue. There's room, however, for "Wait For Me", yet another gem from Hall, a carousel of voices and a chorus that spreads an irresistible trail of love, an antechamber to the smooth, sensual style that would belong to Voices (1980, Rca).

This track, together with the fine opener "The Woman Comes And Goes", is the song one gladly returns to. The rest can be reassessed as essentially a west coast pop effort: the sound of Steve Porcaro's synth is in fact the sound of Toto.

X-Static is largely a pretext for instrumental orgies (three bassists, four keyboard players, five guitarists), demonstrative in the ecstasy of "Running From Paradise"; it's like a photograph capturing the group in motion, during their definitive AM metamorphosis: one has to grant it a certain latitude. But gladly so, given the fruits to come, such as Private Eyes (1981, Rca), a mythic and mythologized album of the Eighties, three-quarters pure pop masterpiece.

The decade just past placed Hall and Oates among the pantheon of names who shaped the course of the most refined American pop. This came through a blend of unprecedented alchemies, on a path comparable to that of their guiding light Todd Rundgren and, on another front, to that of Gino Vannelli and Steely Dan. Though successful at the box office too, their greater attention to forging a distinctive sound (and thus not always in step with prevailing trends) perhaps kept them from reaping the results they might have expected, at least compared to the multimillion-selling numbers the American market was happy to grant many of its other favorite sons.

That this was, all things considered, a sore point can be gleaned from the choices that would define the 1980s, which can be reduced to a common denominator: the attempt, sometimes successful and sometimes less so, to align their musical aesthetic with the fashions of the moment. Given the goals they set themselves, never would a change of perspective prove so winning.

Even though Voices (1980, RCA) retains the rock option typical of their most recent work, albeit with the edges smoothed off, an underlying disco "four-on-the-floor" takes hold, seemingly out of nowhere, of the lead single "Kiss On My List". It seems like a small detail, but it isn't. The song's impact is rather thunderous, and we don't think we're far from the truth in identifying it as the guiding star that would mark the path toward the definitive transformation that would soon follow.

Two figures would prove crucial to what came next: sitting behind the mixing desk is the Englishman Neil Kernon, as would be the case for the following two albums as well, while Sara Allen, Daryl Hall's partner and occasional co-writer since the days of "Bigger Than Both Of Us", becomes increasingly involved in songwriting.

The album as a whole is convincing, revealing the duo's various sides: from the sparkling FM rock of "United State" to the delightful sixties flavors of "Hard To Be In Love With You" and "Africa", from the Righteous Brothers tribute of "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" to the pure soul of "Every Time You Go Away" — a theoretical Hall-penned single that didn't remain just potential only thanks to the resounding success Britain's Paul Young would bring it five years later.

Voices is another transitional album, but given its excellent commercial performance, it serves as a warm-up act for Private Eyes (1981, RCA), which outsells its predecessor by over a million copies, even doubling it if we add up the pair of "gold" singles pulled from it that reach number one.

Private Eyes is the chart-friendly summation, gussied up for mass appeal, of the half-Black, half-white hybrid lessons disseminated through the decade just ended. The guitars, while still present, grow sweeter, the rhythm section heats up, and the question of what sound to give the keyboards is taken very seriously indeed.

It opens with fireworks. The title track, the first of two solid-gold singles that would match the number-one status of "Kiss On My List", is an up-tempo number that literally clings to you through hooks so catchy an average band would have stretched them across three songs. "Looking For A Good Sign" is Wilson Pickett's R&B bleached and refurbished for the 1980s. "I Can't Go For That" (the other number one), an obvious inspiration for the bass/drum groove of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean", is a post-disco classic, an evergreen covered, remixed and sampled right up to the present day (Simply Red, using its backing track, would even get another hit out of it in 2004, titled "Sunrise"). On this track Hall conjures up a spine-tingling falsetto propping up keyboard touches which, set within the electronic drumming, anticipate many inflections of chill-out by a good two decades, while a wide-open-sky sax completes the heartstring-pulling mission.

If the self-satisfied cheesiness of "Mano A Mano" marks something of a stumble, and if "Head Above Of Water" sounds like an outtake from Voices, the frisky "Did It In A Minute" proves to be a little star-spangled pop-glam gem, so much so that it too would land in the Billboard top ten as the album's third released single.

The metamorphosis can be said to be complete, as can the mission of raising to even greater heights of popularity a brand that, almost without anyone noticing, arrives here at its tenth LP of original material.

But the godfathers of blue-eyed soul seem to have genuinely taken a liking to it, so much so that with the following H2O (1982, RCA) they further boost their earnings, again placing three singles in the top ten, including their biggest hit ever, "Maneater". What dominates here is a hyper-refined funk-soul, all saxophone allure and rarefied instrumental touches, with attention to detail reaching dizzying heights. As mentioned, the now-customary trio of top-ten singles opens with the swinging up-tempo bassline of "Maneater", another standard later picked up by hip-hop, which carries a circular chorus you feel you already know after thirty seconds; it continues with the killer slow-burn of "One On One" (another virtuoso vocal showcase for Hall) and closes with the cover of the Mike Oldfield-penned "Family Man".

These are all songs that the average radio listener couldn't possibly claim not to know by heart. And in any case, even the surrounding material is packed with substance. Even in a role inevitably narrowed by the dominant electronic choices, John holds his own with sumptuous guitar solutions. Load-bearing in the case of the fresh pop-rock of "Delayed Reaction", indispensable as funky support on "Art Of Heartbreak" and on the light "Guessing Game". Not to mention the vocal contribution that runs through the whole production: it's always John who, like a hunter, sets the traps along the path Daryl will walk, leaving Daryl to deliver the fatal blow to the now-defenseless listener.

As we can see, the 1980s are granting the duo a creative and commercial high in which nothing seems off-limits to them, but creeping in alongside it are also the excesses that would end up blurring the results that followed.

So Big Bam Boom (1984, RCA) is an album with a highly elaborate stamp that brings with it the now-habitual killer single, this time embodied by the infectious mid-dance groove of "Out Of Touch", which gathers together both the synth-pop instincts then dominant in Northern Europe and the clearly marked traits of Italo disco. Once again, number one is reached with ease both in sales and on the dancefloor charts, and the track is one of those that, like it or not, you simply can't forget.

The album still shows a certain freshness, but the production, built entirely around the invasive pairing of Fairlight and samplers, sounds, in hindsight, hard to swallow even for the most seasoned lovers of studio gloss. The songwriting is by now disarmingly familiar with the public's tastes (perhaps too much so, if anything), but the hand at work is still the steady, assured one of someone who truly knows how to write songs.

The imprint left behind is that of an exhilarating ride with the flavour of a genuine feat — achieving success without sacrificing quality — even if the hangover, and the heavy courses that came with it, call for a pause, right at the moment when everyone stops to take stock of the outcomes of a unique and controversial musical season drawing to a close.

The seal will come with Live At Apollo, which in 1985 will accompany their acclaimed appearance at Live Aid, on stage in their beloved Philadelphia.

The record is an excellent example of pure old-school soul, bolstered, not by chance, by the presence on stage of two Black icons who had inspired Hall & Oates' youth, and not only theirs: Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin of the Temptations. The resulting flood of Motown, complete with an opening medley dedicated to the legendary Black combo, represents for the two whitest soul men in America the fulfilment of a dream.

The line is drawn with the end of their contract with Rca, who the following year nonetheless releases Daryl Hall's second solo album, Three Hearts In the Happy Ending Machine (1986), light years away from his Frippian debut and far too close to a rather colourless mainstream. Its modest success, and the co-production by Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics, certainly do nothing to make it any less dispensable.

Four years on from their last studio record, and with a brand-new contract in hand, the rock-soul Midases present themselves once again to audiences worldwide. Ooh Yeah! (1988, Arista) plays its hand with a soul format partly stripped of its predecessor's special effects, but it's all vocal flourishes and little yelps, using a sophisticated mood and lavish form to mask a worrying shortage of ideas. Nothing seems out of place on the surface: the usual flawless production, a blatant leaning toward radio play (no surprise that "Everything Your Heart Desires" reached number 3 on the singles chart), and a few traces of the inspiration of old, as in the hefty funk of "Downtown Life". But the word "love" in the three closing track titles betrays a frantic rush to cash in, as usual.

Except that this time there's really very little worth remembering, beyond what was already known about the duo's technical pedigree and that of their entourage, who on this occasion end up looking like a beautiful gift wrapper around an empty box.

The Eighties are drawing to a close, bringing with them a drop in sales (which will yield "only" a platinum record instead of the usual double platinum): a warning sign that, alongside creativity, a fair number of listeners too are starting to turn their backs on the project.

Probably rattled by this unexpected setback, John and Daryl resurface after just two years with a work bearing the telling title Change Of Season (1990, Arista), a choice that reveals an awareness that deserved a better fate.

This new effort shows a twofold attempt: on one hand to recapture the Motown feeling that, more or less under the surface, had run through much of their Seventies output, and on the other to adopt the rock-arena edge that has historically held such appeal for American audiences. Emblematic in this respect is the rock ballad "So Close", the duo's last genuine chart hit. The track, with no half measures, serves up Jon Bon Jovi's production to announce to the world that mainstream is still very much their business. For fans of the genre — a camp we don't particularly belong to — the song deserves a spot on an imaginary compilation alongside Bon Jovi himself, as well as the likes of Bryan Adams, Richard Marx and Michael Bolton, and if that was the intention, the goal has certainly been achieved.

The rest is a see-saw in which ideas and quality play only a walk-on role, as if to remind us that, somewhere in there, the champion's touch is still hiding. But it's precisely the artistic choices that undo even the best intentions: the black-leaning title track isn't bad, with its organ and flow of choral call-backs, but the arrangement is painfully tacky, dragging the decent "Everywhere I Look" into the clutches of a faded American sound that, to varying degrees, ends up undermining even the record's other scattered flashes of inspiration.

Luckily for us, the album only manages to go gold (not much by their standards), settling at number 60 on the chart.

The further decline in sales serves as an acknowledgment that a new era has truly arrived, bringing with it the difficulty of reinventing the formula — a feat they had spectacularly pulled off at the turn of the previous decade. In 1993 we see Hall's third solo outing, Soul Alone (Sony), but some parts of the album recall a less inspired Robert Palmer, leaving us rather indifferent.

To hear from the reunited duo again, one has to wait a full seven years, after a silence one might have hoped would prove more fruitful.

Instead, the saga of the forgettable continues, and if anything sharpens its traits with Marigold Sky (1997, U-Watch), which presents a subdued tone that spills into a pop-rock artifice giving ample room to guitar interplay. The first half reveals a sincere attempt to break free of the clichés that made the group's fortune, but it ends up shedding its own personality in the process, settling into an anonymity only partly softened by a subtle vein of melancholy ("Romeo Is Bleeding" and "Marigold Sky"), and when the tempo picks up it veers into questionable territory close to Lenny Kravitz.

The second half retreats into the safer harbour of ballads, which, lined up one after another, can at best aspire to soundtrack a Disney Channel pre-teen drama.

Just a year earlier, Bmg International released Hall's fourth solo album, Can't Stop Dreaming, on the Japanese market, with the rest of the world only getting it in 2003. Aside from the polished arrangements and his ever-reliable vocal sheen, the record never rises above a tasteful exercise in style, further undermined by a re-recording of "She's Gone" that, completely drained of its original pathos and reduced to piano-bar fare, we could have happily lived without. In short, there's no way out of the impasse.

John Oates's first and only solo album after years of silence as part of Hall & Oates, Phunk Shui (2002, CNR; the title's a play on "PS": it's an overly studied disco-funk outing, more weightless than outright bad), can be read as a sign of the artistic marriage breaking down.

But just when everything seemed over, 2003 brought Do It For Love, again released on U-Watch, the duo's own label founded specifically to keep the project alive while freeing it from the iron-clad contracts of the American majors. The former golden duo tries to get back to basics with traditional instrumentation, leaving the fancy touches to the mixing desk, but the tracklist drowns in bland, unremarkable, forgettable love songs dangerously close to an adult-contemporary version of the Backstreet Boys.

In this context, nothing can save Our Kind Of Soul (2004, U-Watch), the inevitable covers album (with three new tracks) paying tribute to the likes of Al Green, Marvin Gaye, Barry White and Aretha Franklin, which, in its rather by-the-numbers execution, works mainly as a reminder and a bit of fun for two such skilled and talented musicians.

Given the direction things had taken, there was no escaping a Christmas album either, which surfaced in 2006: Home For Christmas, the classic indulgence of two luxury crooners who have given so much and, by this point, have little left to prove with their rich artistic experience.

At least sixty million records sold overall, a dozen songs worthy of being taught in a pop music course, an untold number of chart-topping singles, and at least twelve years spent consistently at the top. To paraphrase the title of one of their albums, Daryl Franklin Hohl and John William Oates were, together, truly bigger than the sum of their already enormous talent, turning blue-eyed soul into an unmissable delight of the American popular imagination.

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