I hear a lot of people singing in funny voices and singing like they're stupid. Singing in a deliberately fey and dumb and childish way. And I find it to be a disturbing trend.
— Daryl Hall
My house is actually two houses that were deconstructed. They were Connecticut Valley houses built in 1771 and 1781. I took them down piece by piece and reconstructed them about 50 miles to the west on the New York/Connecticut border.
To me, there's two kinds of music these days. There's ephemeral music, and there's music that has lasting power and depth.
Some artists are nervous - most of them are, to tell you the truth, and they have different ways of exhibiting that. Some of them are boisterous, some are really quiet.
The younger generation gives me more respect than I could ever hope for.
Success and failure are equally surprising.
If you're African American, you are forced into making different choices, in a lot of cases, than you are as a white person.
In my Philly neighborhood, black and white kids hung together without even thinking about it. The spirit of Martin Luther King was alive and well.
The late 20th century had just enough communication abilities to allow superstar-ness and communality to happen. It was a musical renaissance that rivals the visual one that happened in the 1400s.
I don't like showboating. I was never a fan of showing off.
The biggest honor of my career was when I won R&B Artist of the Year back in the 1970s. I look at that as a major honor.
If you see me walking down the street, you're gonna see the same guy as you do on stage, dressed the same, looking the same, and nothing changes. I'm just one person.
For years and years, I was beset with snide remarks by certain members of the press, where they would turn John Oates into a joke, or they would trivialize what I do, which never really bothered me all that much.
You externalise extreme emotions, and you look at them objectively and understand them from a different standpoint.
The Internet allows me to be more free.
I had the idea of 'Live From Daryl's House' way before I contracted Lyme disease.
If you can sing, you never lose your voice. If you don't know how to sing, your voice goes away because you sing from your throat.
Every artistic form has its golden age, and unfortunately I think the golden age for whatever I do probably ended about 1990.
Nobody's going to sell 10 million records by not working hard.
The Philadelphia/New York world of the music business is a tough place to be.
I've got a sense of humor. I'm a funny guy.
Having a solo career is a funny thing.
I've always been a guy who likes to stretch my limits - to find out if I have any, really.
If you are a superstar, or whatever you want to call yourself, a person who's had outrageous success, and you decide to go indie and tell the record companies to screw themselves? That takes a certain amount of courage. And bullheadedness, really.
I specialize in early homes, and what I care about the most is renovating a home and taking it back to its original construction idea.
Nobody really cares about what other people think anymore; they're all about themselves.
The song 'Laughing Down Crying' is not a typical Daryl song.
I think Philadelphia has been underrated over the years as a musical region.
As I got older, my voice got better.
The whole American pop culture started in Philadelphia with 'American Bandstand' and the music that came out of that city.
I've watched the world crash and burn in every sense. I've watched the record industry crash and burn; politically I've watched it crash and burn, financially crash and burn.
I'm constantly on my toes and re-examining my own music.
I'm quite an eclectic musician.
I've been traveling around the world forever.
When you're playing in front of people, everything is external. It's all going from you out to an audience. When you're in a studio, it's very internalised, it's going from the air through you into this meticulously crafted, layered piece of work.
Any song I don't feel good about, I shelve. Anything you ever hear me sing, it's because I want to.
I think there are people who really always have and always will care about the quality of music in general, about the sound of the music, things like that.
I think an artist's true worth comes through an inter-generational thing - when you go beyond your own time, and start influencing people in a greater way than just what surrounds you.
I knew that I would be making music for my whole life; as far as how many people respond to it, you can't plan for that.
I've always been a spontaneous singer. And all the stuff that you hear on the end of the songs, what they call the ad libs - that just comes out of my head. That's not thought out at all. I have the verses and the choruses, and then after that it's total improvisation.
What I do isn't black music; it's just my music.
Late 20th century music was a really important thing. It changed the world, and I'm part of that, and now I'm part of the museum that celebrates that.
As a singer, I float around. I'm kind of scatty, bouncing around a lot. I try to adapt to what's going on around me in the song and the arrangement.
I'm always interested in what fans think.
Reject what you don't want. Get rid of dead wood.
I always say the same thing - believe in what you do, do it, and don't veer away from the truth of it.
I'd like to see more crossover between white and black music. That's something I've been advocating for years.
I love antique architecture, so if I have any indulgences, I have owned and renovated and reconstructed a lot of old houses.
Art is a continuum.
I'm a born collaborator. This is what I was born to do, really.
