Hall & Oates’ Permanent Breakup Reaffirmed by Daryl Hall

Daryl Hall is shutting down fans’ hopes of a future reconciliation with former Hall & Oates partner John Oates.

The 78-year-old, whose hits with Oates include “Maneater,” “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do),” and “You Make My Dreams,” opened up to The Times of London in a new interview published Feb. 28, saying there was no prospect of their reunion following a 2023 lawsuit.

Asked if the ship had sailed on mending his relationship with Oates, Hall quipped, “That ship has gone to the bottom of the ocean,” adding, “I’ve had a lot of surprises in my life, disappointments, betrayals, so I’m kind of used to it.” He added of his time in the music industry, “I’ve been involved with some pretty shady characters over the years. That’s where the problems start.”

Later on in the interview, Hall admitted it’s “very frustrating” to have his songwriting for Hall & Oates overlooked. “The songs with his lead vocal are the songs he wrote, and all the other ones, which is about 90 percent, are the ones I wrote,” he said.

Hall filed a lawsuit against his former musical partner in 2023 to stop Oates from selling their stake in their publishing company, Whole Oats Enterprises, calling it “the ultimate partnership betrayal.” While the legal proceedings remain private, last year, both men indicated that their duo was no more.

During a May 2024 appearance on Good Morning America, Oates claimed that he and Hall hadn’t been close for a while and that the two only spoke when they would perform together. Oates said there was no animosity between the two, but that they “never really talked to each other.” He added, “Over the past 20 years, we’d show up at a show individually, walk on stage, play, and then we’d go our separate ways. It really wasn’t as tight as people might, you know, would like to imagine in their kind of a fantasy imagination of our relationship.”

Then in June 2024, Hall told Billboard that he and Oates “did not have a creative relationship for decades” and that the last song they had written together was in 2000 and with the addition of a third party. “We toured and we toured and we toured, and it was very restrictive to me, and to John,” he told the publication, adding, “The real truth of it all is John just said one day he didn’t want to do it anymore. I said, ‘OK’, but the problem is [Oates] didn’t make the parting and breakup easy, and that’s where the difficulties lay and still lay, and that’s all it is.”