The 1980s File Feature
The Way You Do The Things You Do/My Girl
The Way You Do the Things You Do/My Girl — Hall Oates Revisit Motown at Their PeakTwo Motown Classics, One Very Confident DuoBy the autumn of 1985, Daryl Hal…
01 The Story
The Way You Do the Things You Do/My Girl — Hall & Oates Revisit Motown at Their Peak
Two Motown Classics, One Very Confident Duo
By the autumn of 1985, Daryl Hall and John Oates had spent several years at or very near the top of the Billboard Hot 100 with a consistency that bordered on the statistically implausible. A sustained string of chart-topping singles had established them as one of the most commercially successful duos in American pop history, and they had accomplished it while evolving intelligently from blue-eyed soul in the 1970s to a more synthesizer-forward sound that fit the MTV era without abandoning the deep R&B foundation that made their voices interesting. So when they chose to record a double-sided medley of two celebrated Motown classics, they were not hedging their bets on unfamiliar ground; they were claiming a musical lineage that their entire career had been pointing toward with increasing explicitness.
The Songs and Their Sources
Both songs on the medley came from the Motown catalog. The Way You Do the Things You Do was written by Smokey Robinson and Robert Rogers and became a significant early hit for the Temptations in 1964. My Girl was written by Smokey Robinson and Ronald White and became perhaps the single most beloved song in the Temptations' entire catalog when it topped the charts in early 1965. Pairing these two tracks on a single release was an act of confident curation; Hall and Oates were essentially declaring that they understood where their vocal blend had always come from and were willing to submit themselves to direct comparison with the original recordings. The choice also gave the release two separate chances to connect with listeners across slightly different registers of Motown nostalgia.
A Slow Climb to Number Twenty
The medley debuted on the Hot 100 on August 31, 1985, entering at number 53, and it climbed with steady and purposeful momentum through the autumn weeks. It peaked at number 20 on October 12, 1985, spending eleven weeks on the chart in total. A top-twenty placement for a cover medley, released during a period when original material dominated the upper reaches of the chart, was a meaningful commercial result. The sustained climb from 53 to 20 over several weeks indicated genuine radio traction and organic audience interest rather than a single burst of novelty that quickly faded away under competition.
The Context: Hall & Oates at the Height of Their Powers
Nineteen eighty-five was an extraordinary year for the duo's commercial standing. They had already placed multiple singles at number one by this point in their career, and The Way You Do the Things You Do/My Girl arrived as part of a commercial run that would eventually cement their reputation as the best-selling duo in American music history by some measures. The release demonstrated that their commercial appeal extended even to material they did not write, which was a different and in some ways more impressive demonstration of their standing than their original singles provided. By 1985, audiences were buying Hall and Oates as a proposition rather than just buying specific songs.
Motown's Legacy in Their Hands
The Motown catalog occupies a specific and honored place in American pop history: it represents a moment when Black popular music achieved genuine mainstream crossover on its own artistic terms rather than through white cover versions that diluted the originals. Hall and Oates, by this point in their career, had absorbed that influence so thoroughly that their versions of Smokey Robinson's songs felt like genuine homage rather than commercial calculation. Their treatment of both tracks carries audible respect for the source material. If you want a 1985 entry point into understanding how deeply Motown's vocabulary had penetrated American pop music across a generation, this double-sided release is a pleasurable and revealing place to start.
“The Way You Do The Things You Do/My Girl” — Daryl Hall John Oates's singular moment on the 1980s charts.
02 Song Meaning
The Meaning Behind The Way You Do the Things You Do/My Girl by Daryl Hall John Oates
Covering Motown as an Act of Identity
When established artists cover songs, the choice of material is always a statement about identity and artistic lineage. Hall and Oates selecting two of Smokey Robinson's most celebrated compositions for the Temptations was not an arbitrary commercial decision; it was a declaration about where they had always come from and what they believed pop music was fundamentally for. The blue-eyed soul tradition they had worked within throughout their career found its deepest roots in exactly this kind of material, and these covers were a way of making that genealogy explicit and public rather than merely implicit.
What Smokey Robinson Built
The original meanings of both songs reward close attention. The Way You Do the Things You Do uses extended metaphor with considerable ingenuity to celebrate a beloved's effect on the world around her, finding comparisons in everyday objects that elevate the mundane into the genuinely romantic. My Girl achieves something similar but with even greater economy and emotional directness: it describes the experience of another person becoming your entire emotional weather, your season, your source of warmth regardless of whatever external conditions might prevail. Robinson's genius across both songs was finding imagery that was simultaneously simple in expression and inexhaustible in resonance.
How Hall & Oates Reframe the Material
Hall and Oates bring to this material the particular emotional coloring of their specific moment: 1985 production values, their characteristic vocal blend, and the more sophisticated harmonic sensibility that twenty additional years of pop evolution had introduced into the American musical vocabulary. The songs do not change in fundamental meaning, but they are placed in an entirely new context. Hearing them filtered through the most commercially successful duo of their decade says something about the continuity of soul music's emotional project across a full generation of stylistic change and technological transformation.
Nostalgia as Creative Strategy
Nineteen eighty-five was a moment of intense nostalgia in American pop culture more broadly. The decade had become self-consciously aware of its relationship to the preceding decades; Motown retrospectives, classic rock radio formats, and oldies programming were all thriving commercial propositions. Hall and Oates were tapping into that cultural current, but they were also doing something more substantive: they were arguing, through the quality and sincerity of their performances, that the emotional content of these particular songs was permanently available rather than simply a period artifact preserved under glass.
What the Medley Format Does
Pairing two songs as a medley creates an implicit dialogue between them and suggests a relationship or progression that neither track would communicate alone. Moving from the celebratory, outward-directed energy of The Way You Do the Things You Do into the warmer and more domestically settled contentment of My Girl traces an emotional arc from initial attraction through to the deep comfort of established love. That arc from excitement to belonging is one that most listeners understand from direct personal experience, which is probably why the medley format worked commercially in a chart environment that did not always reward such nostalgic gestures.
→ More from the 1980s File
View all 1980s hits →
Keep digging