Finally, a Hall & Oates revival
For years I have waited for covers of the songs of Daryl Hall and John Oates, and at last someone’s done them. And done them wonderfully. The duo is called The Bird and the Bee, and their album has the properly respectful title Interpreting the Masters Volume 1: A Tribute to Daryl Hall and John Oates.
Say what you will about Hall & Oates’s funny-looking music videos (The hair! The leopard print pants!) and cheesy 80s arrangements; they wrote excellent blue-eyed soul-pop and Daryl Hall had/has a great voice. My favorite Hall & Oates song is I Can’t Go For That (it was sampled in a Simply Red hit in the early 00s).
The Bird and The Bee consists of Inara George on vocals and Greg Kurstin on bass, drums, programming, and keys. They open with an original song called Heard It On The Radio—a tribute to the H&O songs they love—then cover eight hits: I Can’t Go For That, Rich Girl, Sara Smile, Kiss On My List, Maneater, She’s Gone, Private Eyes, and One on One. You can listen to the full album here. Their approach is very cool and laid back, almost like bossa nova lounge but without the straining to sound Brazilian that makes me want to perform a tracheotomy on our alleged bossa nova vocalists.
Make a playlist alternating the H&O originals with the B&B covers, it’ll make the blistering summer a bit more bearable. The Bird and The Bee’s album is available at local music stores.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
May 1st, 2010 at 21:37
Private Eyes is my favorite stalker song.
May 2nd, 2010 at 23:48
I was barely in kindergarten when I Can’t Go For That was released, but I had then-unmarried uncles who rented a lot of Betamax tapes and bought a lot of records, and I loved Hall & Oates songs by the time I could appreciate pop stuff… about five years later. :) Thanks for this tip.