Not every album can be a winner and when you have as varied a career as Daryl Hall and John Oates, there is bound to be a middling-performing album or two. According to Oates, there is one album in particular that he thinks is by far the duo’s worst. Find out which album that is, below.
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The Hall and Oates Album John Oates Dislikes
Out of the 18 studio albums Hall and Oates have made, it’s Beauty on a Back Street that Oates likes the least. It’s not necessarily the album’s content that Oates has an issue with, it was the process of making it that casts a dark shadow over this album in his mind.
Hall and Oates worked with producer Chris Bond on Beauty on a Back Street. According to Oates, Bond was suffering from a drug problem at the time, which made the album a torturous process to make.
“I hate that record,” Oates told the podcast, Rockonteurs. “Of all the records we ever did, to me, that’s my least favorite. It was because of our relationship with Chris Bond. He was in our band in Philadelphia. He went to California and established himself as a producer and he had all the good studios, all the good studio musicians. So it was a good move for us to go there.
He was a flawed individual,” Oates continued. “He had problems and the drugs and everything really took him down. So during the making of Beauty on a Back Street, I mean, there was one day where he literally collapsed on the control board. And we had to call the EMTs and they rushed him to the hospital.”
Needless to say, it wasn’t exactly the perfect environment for creating an album. As a result, Beauty on a Back Street didn’t live up to the hype of Hall and Oates’ previous albums. Nevertheless, there are a few songs worth revisiting on this record. Check it out, below.
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