Saturday January 16, 2021 “I Can't Go for That” Hall & Oates

Radio week concludes with this song that has a :57 second musical intro before you get to the vocals.  So?  And it doesn’t mention radio anywhere in the song?

Well when I was back there in DJ school, yes that’s a real thing, there were a number of skills you needed to master before you graduated and were able to put together your audition reel and one of those skills was  ‘hitting the post’, which meant talking over a song’s  musical introduction (remember Joni Mithcell earlier) until the vocals began, without ‘stepping on’ the singers.

 Most songs had pretty short intros and didn’t allow for a truly complete thought, but: 57 seconds provided ample opportunity for a time check, the traffic, the weather, a bio on the singers,  some news headlines, a stock market report, ‘brought to you by our sponsor’, a James Joyce poem, a ‘dedicated to’, a recipe for chateaubriand and a few chapters from War & Peace.  So this was a DJ favorite that got a lot of radio plays...maybe as much for the popularity of that opening as for the actual music.

They did eventually shorten the intro to a mere :34 seconds.

 As for the song, apparently there was an article in the British press that wanted the lyrics to “I Can’t Go for That” to be about bondage but the songwriter Daryl Hall has suggested that he wrote this as a message to their record label that had been demanding that they record a certain type of song that the record label felt would be a hit, but did not conform with what Hall & Oates had in mind.

 Partner, and ‘highest paid background singer’ by his own admission, John Oates says this is the most sampled song in the very deep Hall & Oates catalog.

 Stay safe and well...and don’t ever get pressured to go for that, whatever that might be.

Easy, ready, willing, overtime,

Where does it stop, where do you dare me to draw the line.

You've got the body, now you want my soul,

Don't even think about it, say no go.

 I, I 'll do anything that you want me to do,

And I'll do almost anything, that you want me too, ooh,

But I can't go for that, (No can do)

No, I can't go for that, (No can do)

Oh, I can't go for that, (No can do)

I can't go for that, can't go for that, can't go for that.

 I can't go for being twice as nice,

I can't  go for just repeating the same old lines.

Use the body, now you want my soul,

Ooh, forget about it, now say no go.

 I, I 'll do anything that you want me to do,

And I'll do almost anything, that you want me too, ooh,

But I can't go for that, (No can do)

No, I can't go for that, (No can do)

Oh, I can't go for that, (No can do)

I can't go for that, can't go for that, can't go for that.

 I, I 'll do anything that you want me to do,

And I'll do almost anything, that you want me too, ooh,

But I can't go for that, (No can do)

No, I can't go for that, (No can do)

Oh, I can't go for that, (No can do)

I can't go for that, can't go for that, can't go for that.

 I can't go for that, can't go for that (No can do)

I can't go, I can't go, for that, (No can do)

Oh, I can't go for that, (No can do)

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no can do,

Oh, I can't go for that, yeah, (No can do)

No, no, no, no, no, no