Great Songs from My Favorite Year in Music: 1985, Part 51

Hall & Oates - "Method of Modern Love"



(Single Release: February 1985)
Let's just try to forget that really disconcertingly dated video and the accompanying, horribly written summary of it on Wikipedia. They don't exist, okay? Rather, let's just concentrate on the song. They proved it once again, thirteen years into their professional careers, after eleven previous studio albums and over 25 charting singles, six of them #1s, Daryl Hall and John Oates produced another mesmerizing track. I've always been an unabashed Hall & Oates fan. I once owned Private Eyes on vinyl, and hopefully will again. These two are songwriting masters, there's just no getting around it. "Sara Smile," "Rich Girl," "Kiss on My List," "You Make My Dreams," "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)," "Maneater," ... need I go on? Their sound is described as blue-eyed soul, a term coined to describe the white artists who were starting to make Rhythm & Blues and soul music in the 60s. There's an apocryphal story, mainly questionable because I half-remember it from either a Behind the Music episode or some similar program, that many people in the Philadelphia music scene, including established artists, at first merely assumed, upon hearing "She's Gone," that Hall & Oates were African American. There were no music videos back then; there was just the radio. The story goes to show how adept the duo is at writing and performing songs in a particular style that they grew up with and loved. "Method of Modern Love" carries on with that tradition, though with an 80s sheen and production gloss that seemed requisite at the time. Once that gloss is stripped off, we are left with a traditional R&B song in all its glory. Hall's vocals are once again superb. His falsettos are second to none. And, despite the 80s stigma, one cannot deny the magnetism of the spelling portion of the song. It is certainly one of the track's biggest hooks and it reels me in every time. I cannot express how much I love Hall & Oates, without any hint of irony. In fact, it even bothers me that I have to qualify it in such a way considering the last few years of disdain for certain popular 80s acts. But, thanks to some love from the band Phoenix and soundtrack appearances, such as in (500) Days of Summer, there has been a much deserved resurgence. For the past four years, Hall has been presenting an online performance show called Live from Daryl's House, in which he performs impromptu music with his guest for the month. He even got Smokey Robinson to sing "Ooo Baby Baby" (a song he notoriously refuses to perform), by merely transitioning into it from "Sara Smile." Hall & Oates are performing at Bumbershoot this year. I may have to find my way there.