How John Oates found a 'silver lining' in the darkness — and inspiration from a tarot card — for ...

&34;I could not have made this record had I not gone through all the things that I've gone through,&34; the former Hall & Oates singer tells EW. How John Oates

"I could not have made this record had I not gone through all the things that I've gone through," the former Hall & Oates singer tells EW.

How John Oates found a 'silver lining' in the darkness — and inspiration from a tarot card — for his new album

"I could not have made this record had I not gone through all the things that I've gone through," the former Hall & Oates singer tells EW.

By Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis is a news writer at*  *with over five years of experience covering the latest in entertainment. A proud Kingston University alum, Emlyn has written about music, fandom, film, television, and awards for multiple outlets including MTV News, *Teen Vogue*, Bustle, BuzzFeed, *Paper Magazine*, Dazed, and NME. She joined EW in August 2022.

EW's editorial guidelines

August 29, 2025 1:00 p.m. ET

Leave a Comment

John Oates. Credit:

It began with a tarot card.

John Oates can still remember the moment clearly. He had invited R&B artist Devon Gilfillian to his Nashville home for a songwriting session, and the pair were chatting in his living room when Oates' wife Aimee produced a deck of tarot cards and spread it out in front of them.

"She said, 'Here, pick one,'" Oates recalls to **. "And I can't remember whether it was me or Devin who slid the card out, but it said 'mending.' And I went, 'Whoa, that's a great title.' And we just walked into the music room and we wrote 'Mending.'"

The single, a simmering track in which Oates and Gilfillian take turns baring their souls to a lost lover, was the complete antithesis of the pensive acoustic songs Oates had been working on at the time and would later include on his 2024 album, *Reunion*. And yet, it stuck with him.

Jason Lee Denton

"It was more like a Philly R&B-soul kind of approach, and I really liked it. It got me charged up," Oates says of the song. "And I thought, 'Hmm, this is a cool vibe. Maybe I should go 180 degrees from the introspective singer-songwriter acoustic thing into a more groove-oriented, more up-tempo, more energetic kind of feel.'"

From there, his new record, *Oates,* began to crystalize. Its 13 tracks follow the 77-year-old singer-songwriter as he juxtaposes tales of love ("Real Thing"), heartbreak ("World Gone Wrong"), and frustration ("Pushin' a Rock") on a bed of swirling soul, R&B, and bossa nova melodies. It's a reminder to listeners to keep their spirits high even when navigating life's low points.

The album came together over a period of years for Oates, who has been producing his own material as a solo artist and a member of the duo Hall and Oates — the Songwriters Hall of Fame-ers behind '70s and '80s classics like "Rich Girl," "Maneater," and "Out of Touch" — for more than five decades.

"I don't do anything that's forced," Oates says. "It's got to have some basis in authenticity and reality. The initial inspiration has to come from someplace. I'm not really a story songwriter, where I'm telling a story from A through B or C or D or E … I just try to take things that are meaningful and emotionally impactful for me and somehow figure out a way of blending it into a song."

After 'Masked Singer' reveal, John Oates shares if he'll work with Daryl Hall again

Here's how the '(500) Days of Summer' Hall & Oates dance sequence came together

His mantra is to take a universal idea and make it personal. "To me, that always seems to work really well with pop music," Oates says. "A lot of people get great ideas, but to take that and somehow craft it into something real? There's a lot of technique to it — a lot of hard work to really bring home a song that people can relate to but that, at the same time, maybe has a greater meaning."

This time around, inspiration showed up in various forms, from the aforementioned tarot card to a phone call with legendary Nashville session musician Jedd Hughes ("Away's Away") to his stint on *The Masked Singer *("Walking in Memphis") and a script for the 2023 film, *Gringa* ("Bajo la Luz de la Luna"). It also bubbled forth through collaborations with artists like Gilfillian, *The Voice* alum Wendy Moten ("Dreaming About Brazil"), and the band Lawrence ("Enough Is Enough").

"I've actually avoided collaborating with people my age because it always seems like we're treading water," Oates says. "But every time I collaborate with a younger artist, there's just this thing that happens that seems really exciting. I can kind of feed off their newer point of view."

Case in point: the album's opener, "Enough Is Enough," which incorporates lyrics from Lawrence's 2021 single "Don't Lose Sight." The idea came to Oates after listening to the band, composed of siblings Gracie and Clyde Lawrence, and connecting with the joy in their music.

The cover of John Oates' new album, 'Oates'.

"I took their verse and put it into my song, and I know it's kind of weird to do that, but I just did it and then I sent it to them," Oates recalls. "I said, 'I hope you guys don't mind, but I took some of your lyrics and I put them into my song.' And they loved it. I got to sit in with them when they played in Nashville, and it led to us going into the studio in New York…. Gracie and Clyde and I did all the background vocals and some of the leads [on the track]."

The single may sound like a happy-go-lucky romp on first listen, but its lyrics explore the need to take a stand after being pushed to the limit. "It's the juxtaposition of being fed up [while] at the same time imposing that vibe, that lyrical context, over music that is really fun and powerful," Oates says. "It's like saying, 'You can be down or you can be frustrated with almost anything, but there should be a silver lining somewhere.' It's all about staying positive and trying to get there and not get bogged down and hung up on the negative stuff."

While the album never makes overt references to specific hurdles in Oates' life, it drops less than two weeks after his former songwriting partner Hall dismissed his lawsuit against Oates in a feud over their shared company. That process in particular weaves its way into songs like "Mending," though Oates insists the pair are on good terms these days. "We've agreed to disagree and agree again," he says. "We're fine. He's doing his thing, I'm doing my thing." (Oates' conversation with EW was held before the conclusion of his legal dispute with Hall.)

Still, Oates stresses that the record couldn't have come together at any other point in his life. "I've been making records since I was a teenager, and that's well over 50 years, so I know how to make a record," he says. "But it's one thing to go into a recording studio and know about the knobs and the wires and the technology and have it be useful to achieve what you want to achieve. It really always comes back to the songwriting. And I could not have made this record had I not gone through all the things that I've gone through, the positive and the negative — from my whole life, really."

With *Oates*, he's ready to step out into the spotlight in his own right and not just be linked to those hits of decades past.

"To me, the legacy of Hall and Oates and the things that Daryl and I created together is like a visit to a museum," he says. "It will stand the test of time and hopefully still resonate into the future. That music will hopefully never go away. But at the same time, you walk through a museum and after a few hours, your feet start hurting, and you've seen so many beautiful things, and you say, 'Okay, enough is enough. I gotta move on. I've gotta go out into the sunshine and see what else is out there.'"

*Oates* is available now.

*This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. ***

Original Article on Source

Source: "AOL Music"

Read More

---

Source: LUX MAG

Full Article on Source: LUX MAG

#LALifestyle #USCelebrities