3 Songs From the 80s That Were Influenced by Popular Hall & Oates Tracks

In the 80s, Daryl Hall & John Oates made the kind of music that keeps on giving. Here are three songs from that decade that either sampled or were directly inspired by Hall & Oates tracks.

“Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson released “Billie Jean” as the second single from his 1982 album Thriller, which currently stands as the bestselling record of all time. The song draws inspiration from Jackson’s personal experiences with crazy fans, which he dealt with from a young age as a member of The Jackson 5. 

“A musician knows hit material,” Jackson said of “Billie Jean” in Moonwalk. “It has to feel right. Everything has to feel in place. It fulfills you, and it makes you feel good. You know it when you hear it. That’s how I felt about ‘Billie Jean’. I knew it was going to be big while I was writing it…”

As Daryl Hall told The Guardian, Jackson used the groove of “I Can’t Go For That(No Can Do)” for “Billie Jean”. Hall’s response to this? “Oh, Michael, what do I care? You did it very differently.”

“Say No Go” by Del La Sol

“Say No Go”, released in 1989, chronicles the crack cocaine epidemic that was going on in the United States at the time. Del La Soul wanted to write a song surrounding that, and they came up with the phrase “Say no go.”

“…Those three words, ‘say no go,’ kinda caught our ear and we thought we could make that about not doing drugs,” Trugoy the Dove of De La Soul told Rolling Stone.

This hip-hop track samples the Hall & Oates song “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)”. 

“Jump” by Van Halen

“Jump” is still Van Halen’s most successful song, even though, initially, the members of the band weren’t too keen on the synth part that Eddie Van Halen came up with for it. 

As Hall told Gary Eskow, the synth part that Halen came up with was copied from “Kiss On My List”.

Ted Templeman, who produced the track, told Ultimate Classic Rock: “I was wrong because it was No. 1, but I don’t even listen to [‘Jump’]. To me, they were a heavy metal f***king band that could do pop tunes – that’s what I liked about ’em. But that took it into another arena. It reminded me of those bands that play in arenas, and then the fucking thing ended up getting played at every arena before a game. But look, I was wrong.”

Photo by: Kevin Mazur/WireImage

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