Hall and Oates

John Oates may be involved a contentious legal battle with his old bandmate, but that won’t stop him from spreading some cheer and raising awareness for a good cause with a new song, “Get Your Smile On.” Oates said he wrote the breezy tune during the Covid-19 pandemic when he was searching for “any positive vibe I could up with.” He began sketching the song on GarageBand, but as it came together, he “decided to really produce the track the way I would have in a professional recording studio.”  He continued: “I…

THIS POST CONTAINS spoilers for this week’s episode of Fox’s The Masked Singer. On The Masked Singer Season 10’s “Soundtrack to My Life” episode, Anteater, who added a raspy twang throughout the show, was revealed as Hall & Oates’ John Oates.  “In keeping with this episode, you were the soundtrack of my life,” panelist Ken Jeong said to Oates after the reveal. “I just grew up on you, man. I’m literally starstruck right now.” After a head-to-head performance against Donut, Candelabra was the second…

In the mid 2000s, Bob Garrett was invited backstage at a Daryl Hall and John Oates concert in Southern California. Garrett, whose credits include working on Broadway shows like The Color Purple and Sing! and writing songs recorded by Tina Turner, Heart and others, remembers how he and his creative partner at the time, Christian Taylor, were greeted. “Daryl said, ‘We’ve been waiting for you,’” Garrett recalls. “They really wanted to do a Broadway show.” That meeting would be the first of many steps in what has…

A Nashville judge ruled Thursday that John Oates must remain in a holding pattern and take no “further action” to sell his half of his business partnership with Daryl Hall against Hall’s wishes. Instead, Oates must wait for the arbitrator selected in the famed duo’s previously filed arbitration to resolve the now highly public battle over the fate of Hall & Oates’ intellectual property. In a six-page ruling obtained by Rolling Stone, the judge said Hall had “made a sufficient showing of risk of irreparable…

The tranquil world of Hall & Oates was rocked this week by news that the longtime duo are in the midst of a nasty legal battle. The exact details are sealed, but we do know that Daryl Hall was granted a temporary restraining order against John Oates. There’s also a trademark dispute of some sort. (Representatives for both artists have not returned e-mails from Rolling Stone seeking comment.) This is shocking on several levels. Hall & Oates are one of the few duos in music history that seemingly always got…

Daryl Hall has taken out a restraining order against his longtime musical partner, John Oates, in a mysterious legal dispute playing out in Nashville. It’s unclear what the dispute is actually about, as the court documents are sealed. The case summary on the Nashville Chancery Court website classifies it as a “Contract/Debt” dispute. Hall filed the initial complaint back on Nov. 16 (with Nashville journalist Nate Rau one of the first to pick up on it).  Along with filing the complaint, Hall filed a motion for…