Daryl Hall and John Oates: H2O, 1982
The album Daryl Hall and John Oates released at the zenith of their Imperial Phase is their artistic peak, too
Daryl Hall and John Oates had, together, a long and varied career, but in the popular imagination they will always be frozen in time as their early-’80s mulleted-and-mustachioed selves, pop gods from the dawn of MTV who defined new wave “Rock N Soul” for an entire generation.
No album of theirs better exemplifies this than their 1982 opus H2O. Not only is it their highest-charting album — it spent a ridiculous 15 weeks at #3 on the Billboard album chart, most of those stuck behind the 1-2 punch of Men at Work’s Business As Usual and Stray Cats’ Built for Speed, and 68 total weeks on the chart — but it includes their biggest-ever single, and was their second consecutive album to reel off a trio of top 10 singles. It’s also one of their two double-platinum studio albums. More than that, though, it feels the most, well, Hall-and-Oates-y of anything in their catalog. 1982-into-’83 was their absolute apex, and H2O sounds like it.
No matter who you are, no matter what your musical inclinations, I feel fairly certain that you know the album’s biggest hit, the 4-week Hot 100 #1 “Maneater.” Based around a bassline almost cribbed from the Supremes’ “You Can’t Hurry Love” (Phil Collins’s cover of which was charting simultaneously with “Maneater” — I can’t make this stuff up!) and featuring a slinky sax line from Charlie DeChant along with some icy-cool vocals from Hall, “Maneater” is one of those singles that immediately evokes a certain time. Its synthetic textures are so 1982. It’s virtually bloodless; there’s a groove here, but no soul. No surprise: this couldn’t get past #78 on Billboard’s Hot Soul Singles chart.
The same can’t be said for the single’s follow-up, the #7 pop/#8 R&B hit “One on One.” A gorgeous synth-led midtempo number, this is Hall and Oates at their soulful finest. They went in a different direction for H2O’s third single, a cover of Mike Oldfield’s sinister “Family Man”: spiky where “One” is smooth, this featuring guitar jabs and a great, crackling solo from future SNL bandleader G.E. Smith, then a member of the H&O band, and Hall nearly yelping on the chorus. The song’s video unfortunately attempts to defang its acidic lyrics about a man considering infidelity, with silly visuals involving the H&O band interacting with young children in a retro-designed house.
The singles released from H2O were a great exemplification of their approach to “Rock N Soul,” as they’d name their subsequent album, ‘83’s greatest hits comp Rock N Soul Part 1. Daryl and John glided with utmost ease from one to the other, and in the early ‘80s, they owned that lane, making it the essence of pure pop — as evidenced by their owning of the charts during that time. Talk about an Imperial Phase: from 1981’s “Kiss on My List” through 1985’s “Method of Modern Love,” Hall and Oates released 13 singles, with an astounding 12 of those hitting the Hot 100’s top 10. The only exception during that run was the fourth single from H2O predecessor Private Eyes, the thumping, bottom-heavy “Your Imagination,” which crawled to #33.
And the diversity on H2O, wow. “Crime Pays” has a subtle new waviness, not new to their work at the time, but more pronounced here; I can almost imagine this getting played on the likes of KROQ or WLIR. Side one’s closer “Open All Night” simmers and seethes, all tension and no release — check out the guitar solo on this one — until it drifts off into the night; Hall’s vocal here is superb. Oates gets leads, meanwhile, on the silly cliché-ridden “Italian Girls” and the excellent “At Tension.” The latter has a military-like precision, particularly in its drums and percussion, and its sound pairs perfectly with lyrics about “standing ill at ease” with a romantic partner (“standing at tension,” attention, get it?).
Hall and Oates made good albums before this one, especially its immediate predecessor Private Eyes. And they’d make good ones again — well, one more — I often rep for its studio follow-up, the messy, clattering Big Bam Boom. But they never topped H2O, which came at the perfect time: the moment when they indisputably ruled the American pop landscape.
[Originally written for Rock and Roll Globe in 2022.]