Daryl Hall Discusses New Album ‘D’ and How the Recording Process Was “Very Spontaneous”

Although gaining fame as part of the iconic duo of Hall & Oates, Daryl Hall is also a talented solo artist who gained entry into both the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. While his contributions to Hall & Oates will always be remembered, the singer looks to the future and expanding his solo career. For Hall, his last solo album, Laughing Down Crying, hit shelves back in September 2011. As he prepared for the release of his new album, D, Hall explained the recording process and how time got away from him. 

Sitting down with Billboard to discuss the new album, Hall seemed shocked at how long it had been since he released an album. “I couldn’t believe how long ago (Laughing Down Crying) was. I dunno — time flies. I’ve been busy with various things and trying to do what I was doing, and the years just flew by.”

Working alongside producer Dave Stewart, Hall’s D releases on Friday, June 21 to the excitement of countless fans. Sharing the process of bringing the album to life, the singer explained, “We took breaks from it and all that. I’d go down there; I have a house in the Bahamas and so does Dave, around the corner. It was really just the two of us, with an engineer (Jesse Samier). We pretty much worked in one-month increments; we’d do a month, then I went away — I was on the road for a year — then I’d come back and we’d do another month…”

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Daryl Hall Promises To Take Fans On A Journey With New Album

While some artists want to rush the process, Hall loved the idea of taking breaks. “I think in some respects it was better to take breaks, ’cause every time we’d jump back into it it’d be fresh. It was all very spontaneous, very happy, not a lot of thought, really. It was just ‘Don’t think, just do,’ and (D) is what came out of it.” 

As for the album itself, Hall promised to take fans on a complete journey given the arrangements of the songs. “We organized the songs to go through a journey with it. We hit sort of a bottom place with ‘I’d Rather Be a Fool’ — that song is totally autobiographical — and then start coming back up again to the new, better world.” He continued, “We didn’t write the songs with that in mind, but when we realized what we had we put it together into a story, in a progression.”

And for those wondering about the name of the album, Hall also revealed “My friends call me D, so I said, ‘OK, why not? I’ll call it my nickname.”

Daryl Hall’s Ongoing Relationship With John Oates

As for his current relationship with John Oates, Hall noted how they didn’t have a relationship creatively for several decades. Even though they toured in 2022, the singer said, “John and I did not have a creative relationship for decades; the last song I write with John was in 2000 and that was with somebody else. We toured and we toured and we toured, and it was very restrictive to me, and to John. The real truth of it all is John just said one day he didn’t want to do it anymore. I said ‘OK,’ but the problem is (Oates) didn’t make the parting and breakup easy, and that’s where the difficulties lay and still lay, and that’s all it is.”

Loving the freedom that comes with being a solo artist, Hall concluded, “I can’t speak for John ’cause I haven’t spoken to him in a long, long time, but I think that’s how he feels, too. And good on both of us. I can still play all the songs that I wrote over the years, under my own name as well as under the Hall & Oates name. It frees me, really. It frees me up.”

(Photo by Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for iHeartMedia)