Like all Daryl Hall & John Oates fans, we’ve been devastated to watch the acrimonious legal battle unfolding between two of our favorite musicians. But thankfully, an irresistible spark of creative inspiration appears to have set things right: Hall and Oates have reconciled after thinking up a song called “Ace And A Half” where a sexy lady plays cards.
Good for them! We’re so glad they could remember what’s truly important.
In a joint press conference today, Daryl Hall and John Oates announced the complete resolution of any and all conflict between them, a development they attribute to being gripped by a shared, powerful vision of an uptempo rock song about a very attractive woman playing poker. The song, titled “Ace And A Half,” will weave a flirtatious narrative in which a gentleman card player tries his luck at a high-stakes table against a beguiling beauty “with a poker face that makes a man stare,” only to find that “she’s a hunter trapping love in her snare.” While the duo are still hammering out the verses, they demoed a brief passage in which Hall sings “I throw down my hand, and she just starts to laugh / She says ‘You call that an ace? Well baby, I’ve got an ace and a half,’” before harmonizing with Oates on a series of oohs so joyously soulful you’d think their whole painful estrangement had never happened.
“As soon as we realized we could do a song that juxtaposes being attracted to a glamorous babe with the experience of playing cards, all that bad blood went right out the window,” said Oates with his arm slung warmly around Hall’s shoulders, adding that they had already begun assembling riverboat gambler outfits to wear in an eventual music video. “The lawsuits, the accusations, that’s all in the past. Now we’re in the studio every day googling sexy ladies and asking ourselves, how would we represent bluffing to her in a piano part? Can we do a ‘Private Eyes’-style clap thing to signify turning cards over? What, in practical terms, would it actually mean for a poker player to have an ace and a half? Only together as Daryl Hall & John Oates can we find answers to those questions, and nothing will ever get in the way of that again.”
Beautifully said—we love you, Hall and Oates!
It’s such a relief to see these legends grooving back-to-back and belting the words “Ace and a half!” while intermittently spitballing various wordplays on poker terminology, not to mention sketching out a potential saxophone solo by going “bwee dee dee” like they’re the saxophone. Truly, to witness it is to feel unmistakably that this is how things should be: Hall plinking away on his keyboard; Oates swaying gently above his guitar; Two halves of a perfect whole, uniting as brothers in the ecstatic reverie of musical creation and getting tastefully horny about an imaginary big-haired femme fatale they came up with together.
Kudos to these two for moving past their differences to sing a fun and sexy song about gambling. We can’t wait to hear the final version of “Ace And A Half” and whatever else their bright future together holds!
