Hall & Oates "H2O" [1982]

Wondering where George Michael got all his shitty production ideas from (that didn't come from the Bee Gees)? You are here. In a successful quest to prove "white soul" is a hopeless oxymoron, weasel-faced singer Daryl Hall and gross mustachioed wingman John Oates make the scrubbed-up Motown sound seem like blues night at the rib shack. Elsewhere they bastardize Prince's vinegar-douched funk programs and gave INXS the horrible idea that they might have a lucrative career doing the same thing. Having been around so long before "H2O" came out, Ball & Scroates somehow managed to morph from a less-dickheaded version of Todd Rundgren to a more-dickheaded version of Robert Palmer. I guess crime pays, as they say. Ultimately, it comes down to this: bad as it is for these guys to update their 70s AM-radio conceits with the shallow synth-washes of 80s pop and Flock of Seagulls hair, the cribbing of Gap Band chorus riffs is just scraping the barrel of patheticness. Nobody was playing these guys at the Frederick Douglass High prom. Suit yourself if you'd like to revisit your crunchy-haired high school days, but I'm warning you: "H2O" holds up about as well as those pleated slacks with the white logo patch on the zipper.