Maneater

Baggage—boy, we carry that weight a long time. Even when we're aware of it, it's often got its hook in us so deep we can't dislodge it.

So I always liked Hall & Oates, even as I thought they were lightweight piffle, and thought the notion that Daryl Hall had one of the great voices in rock, as he claimed in their mid-80s Rolling Stone cover story,  absurd. (He did, of course.)

I'm not sure there was any stage of my music obsession where I didn't like pop. I liked it before I discovered the likes of Led Zeppelin, I liked it when I was deepest in my Pink Floyd or David Bowie phases—I not only saw no problem in liking, say, Black Sabbath and Madonna, I reveled in it—I liked it when I was all about the Replacements and REM. So of course I liked Hall & Oates.

Except for this damn song. We played it in marching band, the one year I did marching band (staggeringly poorly) and man did those wounds go deep. Deeper than I know. So that whenever I hear this song, I recoil, even as I love "Sara Smile" and "She's Gone" and "Method of Modern Love."

So when I saw this bass-centric mix come up, I shuddered. And yet I clicked play. And sweet fancy moses, that bass line by Tom Wolk is deeper than the Marianas Trench, and it turns out there are lyrics to this song! Who knew? (They're...watching a wedding? That can't be right...) And I'm reminded that the fourth line of each verse, which has that incredibly groovy rhythmic displacement thang goin' on, is absolutely fabulous. ("Mind over MATTer.")

At the end of the day, it still might not quite be "Rich Girl" or "Out of Touch," and, sure, the lyrics might be more than a touch misogynistic, but my god that bass line.