From the 70s through the mid-80s, Daryl Hall and John Oates produced a string of decade-defining hits like “Private Eyes”, “Maneater”, and “You Make My Dreams”. After the first couple of successful songs, it became clear that for Hall and Oates, combining pop, rock, and R&B was definitely their strong suit. Even Hall once described the duo as the “80s Beatles” and compared them to Lennon and McCartney in a Rolling Stone interview.
However, if you look at some of their early hits, you’ll see that Hall and Oates weren’t the only minds behind their artist project.
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In fact, for songs like “Maneater” and “Private Eyes”, credit has to be given to Sara Allen, Hall’s long-time girlfriend. Janna Allen, her sister, also collaborated on songs like “Kiss On My List” and “Private Eyes”.
In an interview with Billy Corgan, Hall described the sisters as being “very influential” when it came to songwriting.
“Kiss’ and ‘Private Eyes’. That was Allen’s sisters and me,” Hall shared. “‘Kiss On My List’ was a song I wrote with Janna Allen. She was only 20 years old and she came up with it, with the chorus and then I fleshed out the verse and uh, that was a real collaboration…”
He continued, “‘Private Eyes’, [Janna] brought Private Eyes to the table. She had written this kind of template for the song with a guy named Warren Pash, and they gave it to me and I altered it and changed it and then Sarah and I wrote the words.”
Daryl Hall on Writing With Sara Allen
Hall and Sara Allen were together for nearly 28 years. During that time, Allen was not only a co-writer on some of his biggest songs but also served as a muse for tracks like “Sara Smile”. When asked whether there were challenges to having his partner as his collaborator, Hall told SongFacts, “No.”
“No. Because she was really good at jumping into my thoughts and helping me to sort of coalesce them,” he shared. “That’s really what it was all about…”
He then referenced songs like “August Day” and “Room To Breathe”, where Allen was the sole lyric writer.
He continued, saying, “So she did write lyrics on her own, too, but I would say for the most part, it was enabling me to organize my own thoughts, and of course the occasional idea, which made her a co-writer. That’s really the way I mostly wrote with her.”
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