Hall & Oates - 1983: Rock 'n Soul Part 1

1983: Rock 'n Soul Part 1

By the fall of 1983, Hall & Oates were one of the biggest pop music acts in the United States. They had five Number 1 singles to their credit, two consecutive Top 10 albums and were one of the biggest names on MTV. A cover of the 1957 Bobby Helms classic "Jingle Bell Rock" was recorded and released in time for Christmas 1983, complete with a humorous video of the band, that received extensive airplay on MTV. In 1983, they released their first greatest hits album entitled Rock 'n Soul Part 1. The album peaked at Number 7, and the two new songs that were written and recorded for that LP also became Top 10 hits as well.

The first single released from this album "Say It Isn't So" battled six weeks for the Number 1 spot with Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson's "Say Say Say" at the peak of Thriller mania. "Say It Isn't So" remained at Number 2 for an impressive four weeks from December 1983 to January 1984. The battle with the McCartney/Jackson single led disc jockey Peter Bush of New York's WPLJ Radio, which had just switched from rock to Top 40 the previous June, to intro the Hall & Oates entry "Say, Say, Say It Isn't, Isn't, Isn't So, So, So".

Hall & Oates' follow-up single "Adult Education" received heavy airplay at both pop and black (urban contemporary) radio, and reached Number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in April 1984. It was accompanied by a dark, New York City-oriented music video set in a cave. John Oates later told VH1 that the clip resembled the Survivor TV show on acid.