Songoftheday 11/11/13 - Shake it up is all that we know using the bodies up as we go, waking up to fantasy the shades all around aren't the colors we used to see...


Daryl Hall & John Oates - "Out Of Touch"
from the album Big Bam Boom (1984)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 16

Today's Song of the Day is by the blue-eyed soul/pop hitmaking duo of Daryl Hall and John Oates, who had started out 1984 with their career-apexing greatest hits set Rock N Soul Part 1, with two more top ten singles from it with "Say It Isn't So" and "Adult Education". After the break afforded by the hits set and most of 1984, the pair released their twelfth studio album Big Bam Boom. With production help from dance remix king Arthur Baker, the club-ready set spun off one of their best-loved hits as its first single, "Out Of Touch". Written by the duo with Bob Clearmountain producing, the song would bring them back to the top of the charts...


"Out Of Touch" became Hall & Oates' sixth and so far most recent #1 single in December of 1984. The record also topped the dance club play chart, and went to #8 on the Adult Contemporary radio list. Proving its crossover appeal, "Out Of Touch" also went to #18 on Billboard's rock radio chart and #24 on the R&B tally. But again proving how imported pop music was having a hard go, the single stalled out at #48 in the UK, though a bit better at #15 in Germany.

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...here's the duo starting off their 1985 Liberty Island concert with "Out Of Touch"...


In 2004 the filter-sample dance act Uniting Nations sampled the chorus of  "Out Of Touch" (sung by Jinian Wilde) into a dance jam of the same title which went to #7 on the British singles chart and top-10 in a big chunk or Europe..


..and more recently, dubstep act Nero interpolated the song with vocals by Daryl into their single "Reaching Out" which went to #92 in 2011..


Back to Hall and Oates, here's the duo live in Australia last year..


Daryl has covered "Out Of Touch" a few times on his Live From Daryl's House webseries (you have to catch up on that). First, here he is with Scottish singer KT Tunstall..


...and again with Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy...


...and lastly, an acoustic take from 2008...


Seriously, these guys need to get in to the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame this time out.

Up tomorrow: two soul singers reflect on their most recent nookie.

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