Daryl Hall & John Oates – “Wait For Me”

TOP 40 DEBUT: December 1, 1979

PEAK POSITION: #18 (January 26, 1980)

One of the most dominant chart acts of the 1980s started the decade in decidedly non-dominant fashion. Daryl Hall and John Oates were coming off two underachieving albums in a row, and two months after its release, X-Static was shaping up to be their third straight non-starter. (The 1979 LP would eventually wind up the lowest seller of their entire RCA tenure.) Less than three years had elapsed since “Rich Girl” hit #1, but three years were an eternity in the late Seventies, an era when the radio landscape seemed to be reinventing itself on a month-by-month basis. No single they’d released over that time frame had gone any higher than #20. And after “Wait For Me,” a gorgeously crafted gem that Hall later called “one of the best songs I ever wrote,” stalled out at an only marginally better #18, the duo must’ve wondered if their peak years were already behind them.

Turns out the peak years were just beginning. Hall and Oates would go on to have more #1 singles in the first half of the Eighties than any other act, group or solo, and they would get there via a potent combination of soul, pop, new-wave, and hooks-for-days songwriting. That combination was still very much a work-in-progress across much of 1979’s ambitious-but-undercooked X-Static album. But on “Wait For Me,” they nailed it. They absolutely nailed it. Long before the public got back on board, Hall and Oates had already figured out the direction that would reshape the rest of their career.

Daryl Hall first met John Oates in the middle of a gang fight. The year was 1967, and both men were attending an R&B showcase inside Philadelphia’s Adelphi Ballroom, promoting their own separate bands until violence broke out. Trying to escape the melee, the young musicians fled to the safety of the same service elevator; hasty introductions revealed they each attended Temple University, and a friendship was born. Eventually the two began sharing apartments and, later, creating music together. In lieu of a proper band name, the duo simply borrowed the label from their mailbox: Hall & Oates.

Rock critics in the mid-Seventies tended to categorize the duo’s sound as “blue-eyed soul,” basically code for “white guys playing black music.” But Hall and Oates came by their R&B credentials honestly. They’d each started out in separate vocal groups (the Temptones for Daryl, the Masters for John), performing soul covers for primarily black audiences. Both the Temptones and the Masters released regional singles on tiny imprints run by Kenny Gamble; Hall would later play keyboards and sing backup on numerous sessions for Gamble and his partner, Leon Huff. The “Philly soul” movement that exploded a few years later didn’t include Hall and Oates, even tangentially, but it’s still fascinating to see how intertwined they were in the early stages of that scene.

At the same time, the duo never saw themselves as pure R&B, and actively resisted attempts to place their music inside that particular box. It’s the reason they turned down an offer from Gamble and Huff to join their Philadelphia International label, opting instead to sign with Atlantic Records. During their three-year tenure with the company, Hall and Oates released three albums that didn’t sell and only one charting single: “She’s Gone,” which peaked at #60 in early ’74. Even bona fides from the R&B community couldn’t overcome their near-total lack of success at Atlantic; by the time soul quintet Tavares took a cover of “She’s Gone” to #1 on Billboard’s “Hot Soul Singles” chart in December, the pair had already been dropped.

Eighteen months later, Hall and Oates finally landed an actual hit of their own. “Sara Smile,” the pair’s second single under their new contract with RCA, peaked at #4 on the Hot 100, along with crossing over to #23 R&B for good measure. (It's a 7.) Their old label, Atlantic, responded by re-releasing “She’s Gone,” and that became a hit too. (“She’s Gone” reached #7 on its second try. It’s a 10 both times.) When “Rich Girl” ascended to #1 on March 26, 1977, it gave Hall and Oates three Top 10 singles within a twelve-month span. Three different hits, three different sounds, from three different albums? The duo couldn’t miss—until they did. They wouldn’t return to the Top 10 for another four years. You can see how that might get a little frustrating.

“Rich Girl” was a fascinating amalgam of everything swirling around Hall and Oates at the time, from glam-rock stomp to Philly soul strings to doo-wop harmonies, held together by Daryl’s spot-on vocal performance. (It’s a 9.) “Wait For Me” took that sound and filtered its pieces through the punk and new-wave movements that had sprung up in the interim. Synth patches replaced strings; bass and kick drum anchored a rocked-up Ronettes rhythm. The stomp came from Jerry Marotta, moonlighting between Peter Gabriel sessions, while G.E. Smith, in his first of many standout H&O moments, kicked off the proceedings with a jagged guitar line worthy of Tom Verlaine.

Again, Hall and Oates absorbed these newer influences organically. They were now living in New York City, attending loft parties with members of the Ramones and Television, and occasionally decamping to Europe, where Daryl would collaborate with King Crimson frontman and avant-garde maestro Robert Fripp. (The album they recorded together scared the hell out of RCA, who sat on it for three years before sneaking it out in March 1980. It’s easily one of the weirdest and best things Daryl Hall ever did.) There’s plenty of moments on X-Static—like “Bebop/Drop” and the non-hit “Portable Radio”—where the desire to incorporate these new elements overwhelms the songs themselves. Crucially, “Wait For Me” gets the balance right, modernizing the duo’s aesthetic while keeping their soulful essence intact. Learning how to achieve that balance consistently would reap dividends in the years to come.

In many ways, X-Static was a trial run for Voices, the 1980 release that paid off all the bets Hall and Oates were taking in 1979. Both albums were recorded entirely in New York, a move made for convenience—the duo could literally walk to the sessions from their respective apartments—and also to better capture the sound of their new hometown. Both albums used the same core group of musicians: bassist John Siegler, saxophonist Charlie DeChant (still with H&O forty years on), and the aforementioned Smith and Marotta. The only major change between records came once David Foster ceded production duties to the duo themselves.

By the mid-Eighties, Foster would become one of the most in-demand producers in the industry: famous for turning proto-punk oddballs the Tubes into MTV heroes, then infamous for resurrecting Chicago as world-class power balladeers. But at the beginning of the decade, Hall and Oates were his only major clients. In the liner notes of the H&O box set Do What You Want Be What You Are, Foster calls his time with the duo “one of the great learning curves of my career” before admitting regret. “Although I helped provide the bridge that propelled them to their greatest commercial success, I always was disappointed in myself for not being the one that actually produced the ‘big songs’ for them.”

With the benefit of hindsight, it’s almost comical to trace how dramatically both parties’ fortunes would improve after parting ways with each other. But I still believe Foster assisted Hall and Oates’ sonic evolution in critical ways, not least by providing them with important (if accidental) career advice. As John remembers in those same liner notes: “In the middle of making [X-Static], Foster said, ‘Why am I here, because you guys are producing this yourselves?’ That was the final nail that convinced us.” The duo would handle their own production duties on every album to follow.

Full disclosure: I can’t be objective about “Wait For Me.” This was the first Hall and Oates song I ever heard, thanks to its placement on the car stereo demonstration cassette that came with my parents’ 1980 Chrysler K-Car station wagon. Years before I discovered Top 40 radio, I listened to that tape—but really, just this song—over and over, as days became weeks and weeks became months. It was a catchy tune, sure. But there was something else, something my prepubescent brain only understood on a sub-conscious level. “Wait For Me” cloaks itself in pop trappings to hide the complicated adult resentments lurking underneath. It’s an indictment disguised as a love song.

Forty years on, that mix of sweet and sour, of bitter melancholy and pure pop, is the reason “Wait For Me” still resonates. The way Daryl’s voice flutters effortlessly in and out of falsetto: “Midnight hour/ Al-most over.” The way the bassline descends to subtly underline his “I’m afraid it will all fall down” line. And especially the midpoint breakdown, where the “la la la” hook eventually explodes into a Frippian collage of intertwined guitars, as Hall delivers the song’s crucial lyric: “Love is what it does and ours is doing nothing/ But all the time we spent, it must be good for something/ Please forgive all the disturbance I’m creating/ But you got a lot to learn if you think that I’m not waiting for you.”

Just like that, the entire focus shifts. “Wait For Me” is no longer about pining away for your lover: I miss you, I know we’re apart, I’m coming back to you soon. It’s about betrayal, and the bitterness that follows: I was faithful, but you weren’t. I held up my end of the deal, and you didn’t. There’s an ocean of agonizing between “please wait for me” and “you got a lot to learn if you think that I’m not waiting for you.” And to finally grasp that distinction as an adult, after loving this song for almost two decades? I was just as blindsided as the narrator.

To this day, “Wait For Me” remains a secondary entry in the H&O canon, routinely overlooked in favor of the duo’s bigger, more dominant hits. I get that. Lots of those hits are iconic. Many rank among the best pop music the decade produced. In entries to come, I will go to bat for nearly all of them. That said, I still consider “Wait For Me” to be one of the best things Hall and Oates ever did. And I have a sneaking suspicion they agree.

Four years after “Wait For Me” came and went on the charts, Hall and Oates released Rock ’n’ Soul Part 1, a greatest hits album doubling as well-deserved victory lap. By that point, the duo were chart royalty. Of the compilation’s twelve tracks, five had peaked at #1. Six others had already (or soon would) reach the Top 10. The only exception? “Wait For Me,” a minor hit momentarily—and deservedly—elevated to major status at last.

GRADE: 10/10

I WANT MY MTV: So the radio at the beginning is supposed to be a tie-in to the X-Static album cover, right? And then the band is playing… inside the radio? (Nothing about early videos made much sense.) Love Daryl’s all-black look, though. That's a keeper.