Trivia / Daryl Hall & John Oates

• Breakthrough Hit: "Sara Smile" in 1976, which was soon followed-up by the reissued "She's Gone" and "Rich Girl".
• Channel Hop: They started on Atlantic, released their biggest hits on RCA, didn't do as well with Arista, and eventually wound up recording for small indie labels ever since.
• Chart Displacement: They had six #1 hits in America, but "You Make My Dreams" was not among them, only peaking at #5. But with the Revival by Commercialization mentioned below, it's probably their most familiar song among younger listeners.
• Creator Couple: Many of their '80s hits were written by Hall and his long-term girlfriend Sara Allen (whom he had earlier written "Sara Smile" about). The two never married, but were together from the early '70s to the early '00s and remain close friends.
• Hostility on the Set: Hall in late 2023 sued Oates to prevent him from singing the songs in their catalogue. It was later revealed that Hall doesn't think much of Oates as a friend, if at all... and only thinks of him as a business partner. It would sadly explain Hall's Control Freak tendencies and possible Jerkass core towards Oates.
  • To date, the controversy behind the lawsuit is about ownership of the song catalogues between both Daryl Hall and John Oates. The former claims all the songs in their catalogue are his, while the latter claims it's both. Depending on the situation and how Oates handled responding to the lawsuit with some class, depending on how you see it, Hall comes out of it even more callous than before.
• Revival by Commercialization: "You Make My Dreams" has been featured in a number of movies, with Stepbrothers and (500) Days of Summer in particular raising the song's profile.
• Similarly Named Works: Irving Berlin, The Outfield, Weezer^* well, technically "Say It Ain't So", but still and Bon Jovi have also made songs named "Say It Isn't So".
• What Could Have Been: Robert Fripp asked Daryl Hall to front a revived King Crimson after he sang on Fripp's Exposure album, but Hall declined as Hall and Oates were hitting their stride as hitmakers. This lead to Crimson's Discipline lineup to be instead fronted by Adrian Belew (previously a collaborator with Frank Zappa, David Bowie, and Talking Heads, among others) in the early '80s.
  • Hall was also considered to front Van Halen after the departure of David Lee Roth. He declined for the same reason.

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