“Watch you blowing the lines when you’re making a scene.” So he’s using old movie lingo to talk about how she’s getting her stories mixed up, and he’s maybe throwing a sly cocaine reference in there, too. The lyrics come laden in hidden meanings. Daryl Hall tells a girl that he can tell whether she’s lying, that he’s always watching her - not exactly the most romantic sentiment. Lyrically, “Private Eyes” is all about romantic obsession and intuition. Oates peers at the camera through a magnifying glass. “Private Eyes” gets its point across in the simplest way imaginable: Hall, Oates, and their backing band members all dress up like old-timey gumshoes.

They had a small budget and a few hours, and Dubin got it done. Jay Dubin, director of Hall and Oates’ “Private Eyes” video, says that the duo called him up, basically on the spur of the moment, and asked him to come to New York’s Electric Lady studios, where they were recording, to shoot a clip. And yet Hall and Oates may have been the first true MTV stars - the people who figured out how to get the most out of pairing simple, cartoonish imagery with songs that lingered in people’s brainpans. Hall and Oates have said that they didn’t even like the idea of making music videos, that they considered the process a distraction. In the fall of 1981, MTV had only been airing for a few months, and most people didn’t have cable. In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.ĭaryl Hall and John Oates must’ve felt like they’d cracked a mystical code.

Hall oates private eyes 1981 rar