50 Daryl Hall & John Oates Songs You Better Have…Or Else
“She’s Gone”
(1976; #7 pop)
Writer: Daryl Hall, John Oates
Producer: Arif Mardin
from the album Abandoned Luncheonette
Hall and Oates have shared on a number of occasions that “She’s Gone” may be their quintessential composition. “It’s one of the early songs that we completely wrote together,” Hall said in a 2009 interview. Oates agreed: “It’s the first song that put us on the map. The first time the world heard about us was through that song.”
Written about failed romances with ex-girlfriends, “She’s Gone” is almost self-explanatory as the pair belt out “what went wrong” using Righteous Brother harmony. A 1985 Rolling Stone interview uncovered Hall writing his share of the song about the pains of his failed marriage with Bryna Lublin. The aches and pains of the pair’s singing are felt from the very beginning, thanks to the falling effects embedded inside Arif Mardin’s string arrangement. The greatest epiphany of the song’s lyrical madness can be traced inside the Isaac Hayes-esque climax found before the very last chorus is heard. Using a slow process of modulations and an accompanying guitar solo by Oates, the song’s energy builds and builds until Hall can no longer hold in the pain. “She’s gone,” he eventually belts, with Oates replying in typical call-and-response fashion.
When the song was originally released in 1973, the song was only a modest success in their hometown. It managed to hit number 60 pop and re-appeared two years later when Atlantic repackaged the song when the group found success with “Sara Smile” on their new record home at RCA. This time around, “She’s Gone” journeyed all the way to number 7 pop. It is important to note that soul/disco group The Tavares picked up the song in 1974 and reimagined the number on their Hard Core Poetry LP. Their version was a number one r&b hit, opening up the black market threshold to Hall & Oates and endless possibilities for the kind of culture crossover Elton John experienced with “Bennie and the Jets.”
