I think once people who lived through the late seventies and early eighties work out their collective shame and angst about it the music of that time will be rehabilitated.
Seriously, I can't be the only one of my generation who thinks--yes, ASIDE from the gradual disillusionment of an entire country--a time when people actually danced to disco music and there were women who looked like this can't have been all bad.
(There's a reason disco songs are played at every bat mitzvah and un-ironic wedding and it is because they are easy and fun to dance to.
"Dancing Queen" may not be ABBA's best work but it is so good at doing what it does.)
But this post is not about disco or what happened to make a country full of people who stood on the National Mall and actually sang "Give Peace A Chance" over and over again "so the President would hear" all vote for Reagan and believe in things like "welfare queens" and "just say NO to drugs".
It's about Hall & Oates.
(But if you figure out that second thing--the idealism of a generation turns sour thing--please do let me know.)
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The song: Hall & Oates, "Sara Smile"; 1976
Please do me the brief favor, which for many people will not be too difficult, of forgetting you ever knew anything about Hall & Oates.
Yes, John Oates is an odd-looking guy, and yes, it's unclear what contributions he actually made to the band (although he did co-write "Sara Smile"!), and yes, both Hall AND Oates did get bad plastic surgery and now do embarrassing washed-up things like play three shows in a row at Spirit Mountain Casino, and YES, they did record a truly execrable cover of "Jingle Bell Rock" in 1983.
But if you can find it in your heart to forgive them all those outward representations of their human foibles, and listen to "Sara Smile" as a song,
I think you will like it a lot.
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The song: "Rich Girl"'; 1977
The moment: 0:27; 0:53
What "Sara Smile" reveals about Hall & Oates is not only the incredible power, subtlety, and depth of Daryl Hall's voice but also the band's superb sense of timing and pacing. Although "Sara Smile" shows its hand pretty thoroughly just in the not-iconic-but-probably-should-be-now-that-I-really-think-about-it opening four bars, it builds with laconic ease into a lush, layered peak and then fades away just as smoothly and simply.
(This seems like a good point in the progression of this blog to reveal that I actually do enjoy eating plain vanilla ice cream quite a bit, if that illuminates my worldview at all to you.)
"Rich Girl" adds to this formula with its more cutting subject matter and vocal delivery; its corresponding, driving guitar line; and its well-reasoned, sturdy structure.
0:27 represents the moment when "Rich Girl" really kicks off, with the strings and vocals slamming in over a measured, easy drum and guitar base. Although the song will continue to build and grow until my personal favorite line at the very end (2:17, for the curious), the addition at 0:53 of the back-up echo vocals under the "Rich Girl" refrain is what really says to me, "Okay, guys, we are Hall and we are Oates and we are DOING this song right now so you might want to stand back. It is going to get big, and the violins are going to get crazy, and the guitar line might go a little honky-tonk in the middle, and damn it, we are going to pretend to be the Marvellettes here in these backup vocals if we have to, but we are going to make this song work because we are Hall, and we are Oates."
This, and everything I said above about bad plastic surgery and horrifying Christmas carol covers, is put so much more elegantly than I could ever hope to express it for myself on Wikipedia:
"While much of the duo's reputation is due to its sustained pop-chart run in the 1980s, Hall & Oates are also respected for their ability to cross stylistic boundaries."
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The question of where pop crosses into rock is a large and divisive one. (Otherwise, why would it make any sense at all to ask someone if they are a "Beatles person" or a "Stones person"? But let's face it, it does and the answer does matter.)
My personal definition--and this explains a lot of why Guns N' Roses are actually my favorite rock band*--involves an element of chutzpah.
The risk of sounding like an inspirational quote on a Luna Bar is too great for me to illuminate this further other than to say that a great pop artist does what needs to be done in order to make a song sound like what it should.
If you can think of one thing you would add or remove from "Rich Girl" that would improve it, I challenge you (no, really, I'm not just being needlessly combative--this would be completely awesome) to e-mail me at inbedwithamywilson@gmail.com.
In the meantime I'll be practicing my glissandos and four-on-the-floor drumbeats in preparation for my major defense of disco.
Yrs,
AW
*The post in which this proclivity of mine swims up to the light from the murky depths in which it currently resides is going to be, no doubt about it, EPIC.
