Maneater (Hall & Oates song)

"Maneater"
Single by Hall & Oates
from the album H2O
B-side	"Delayed Reaction"
Released	October 31, 1982
Format	7" 12"
Recorded	December 1981
Genre	Soft rock new wave
Length	4:31 (album version) 3:28 (7") 6:00 (extended club mix)
Label	RCA
Writer(s)	Sara Allen Daryl Hall John Oates
Producer(s)	Daryl Hall John Oates
Hall & Oates singles chronology
"Your Imagination" (1982) "Maneater" (1982) "One on One" (1983)

"Maneater" is a song by the American duo Hall & Oates, featured on their eleventh studio album, H₂O (1982). It reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on December 18, 1982.^[1] It remained in the top spot for four weeks, more than any of the duo's five other number-one hits, including "Kiss on My List", which remained in the top spot for three weeks.

Background and writing

In an interview with American Songwriter in 2009,^[2] Daryl Hall recalled,

John had written a prototype of "Maneater"; he was banging it around with Edgar Winter. It was like a reggae song. I said, "Well, the chords are interesting, but I think we should change the groove." I changed it to that Motown kind of groove. So we did that, and I played it for Sara Allen and sang it for her…[Sings] "Oh here she comes / Watch out boy she’ll chew you up / Oh here she comes / She's a maneater… and a…" I forget what the last line was. She said, "drop that shit at the end and go, 'She's a maneater,' and stop! And I said, 'No, you’re crazy, that's messed up.'" Then I thought about it, and I realized she was right. And it made all the difference in the song.

Hall also opined,^[3] "We try and take chances. Our new single "Maneater" isn't something that sounds like anything else on the radio. The idea is to make things better."

John Oates has explained that while it is natural to assume the lyrics are about a woman, the song actually was originally written "about NYC in the ’80s. It's about greed, avarice, and spoiled riches. But we have it in the setting of a girl because it's more relatable. It's something that people can understand. That's what we do all of the time", after describing how they took a similar approach with the earlier song "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)".^[4][5]

Music video

The Hall & Oates music video opens with a woman (Aleksandra Duncan) walking down a red staircase, and the band playing in a dimly lit studio with shafts of light projecting down on them. The band members step in and out of the light for their lip sync. A young woman in a short party dress is shown in fade-in and fade-out shots, along with a black jaguar, hence the song line "The woman is wild, a she-cat tamed by the purr of a Jaguar." The song's chorus is "oh, oh here she comes; watch out boy, she'll chew you up; oh, oh here she comes, she's a maneater."

Legal action

In November 2008, Hall & Oates initiated legal action against their music publisher (Warner/Chappell Music). An unidentified singer-songwriter was alleged to have used "Maneater" in a 2006 recording, infringing copyright, and by failing to sue for copyright infringement, Warner Chappell Music were alleged to have breached their contract with Hall and Oates.^[6]

Cover versions

• In 1998, Las Vegas band The Kickwurmz released two versions of the song: Maneater, and Man Eata' Digital Media House Remix.
• In 2010, jazz and electronica group The Bird and the Bee's album Interpreting the Masters Volume 1: A Tribute to Daryl Hall and John Oates includes a studio recorded cover of "Maneater," featuring backing vocals from Garbage vocalist Shirley Manson, and was released March 23 of that year.
• In 2011, rock band Harvey Danger recorded a cover of this song for their final album Dead Sea Scrolls, which was available on the band's website.
• In 2011, indie rock band The Wooden Birds covered this song as a B-side on their "Two Matchsticks" single.
• In 2011, psychobilly and rockabilly group The Koffin Kats recorded a cover of this song for the album Rockabilly and Psychobilly Madness, an album dedicated to releasing covers of famous pop music songs in the rockabilly and psychobilly style.
• In 2013, Grace Mitchell performed this song for the Original Soundtrack of the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
• In 2014, Electric Six recorded a cover of the song as part of a pledge package for their Absolute Treasure Kickstarter campaign. The cover was subsequently released online.^[7]

Live cover performances

• The now defunct Chicago band Split Butt-Crack covered the song live, and also included it on their 2004 album Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.
• The Bird and the Bee covered the song live with John Oates on March 5, 2010 at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles, California. .
• On December 30, 2011, Umphrey's McGee covered the song live in concert during their New Year's Run in St. Louis.

Sampling

• The song "We're Live (Danger)" by rapper Royce Da 5'9" (which was featured in the highly acclaimed game Grand Theft Auto III) contains a sample from the Hall & Oates song "Maneater".^[8]
• The song "Drankin' Partna" by singer T-Pain uses a vocal sample of "Maneater".

References in media

In film

• The original version of the song is heard in the 1999 film Runaway Bride, and appears on the soundtrack. Early in the movie Richard Gere's character Ike Graham describes several mythological 'Maneaters' in a newspaper column, and then cites one human one, Julia Roberts' Maggie Carpenter, who's left multiple men standing at the altar.
• The song is also used in the 2016 film Sing Street.
• In the film Boat Trip, Horatio Sanz and Cuba Gooding Jr. accidentally go to a gay cruise, a man playing a piano with other gay men, singing "Maneater", but with the lyrics "here he comes, watchout for he chew you up", instead of the original lyric "here she comes".

In television

• In the season one Scrubs episode "My Bed Banter and Beyond," Dr. Cox tells a psychologist that his wife is "a man-eater. And I'm not talking about the 'whoa-whoa, here she comes' kind."
• In the Grey's Anatomy season 6 episode "The Time Warp", the song briefly plays in the background during a flashback scene set in 1982.
• In 2007 the song was used as the theme song of "He's Not the Messiah, He's a DJ", the premiere episode of Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil. The song has since been removed from subsequent airings and from the version posted on the Adult Swim website.
• In the Beavis and Butt-head episode "Sign Here," the duo watches the music video.
• In the "A Brown Thanksgiving" episode of The Cleveland Show, Hall & Oates sing it after appearing as an angel and devil on Cleveland's shoulders.
• In the season five Bob's Burgers episode "Itty Bitty Ditty Committee," Darryl sings the song in the computer lab.

In video games

• In 2009, the song appeared on Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony as a part of the Vice City FM radio station. The song also featured in a cut scene from The Ballad of Gay Tony in which Evan (Tony's boyfriend) sings an extract from the chorus.
• The North American release of Ys I & II features a reference to "Maneater" at the start of Ys I.
• The Backyard Baseball 2003 edition of the Backyard Sports series includes a reference when the player Keisha Phillips appears; with her saying "Uh, oh, here she comes"; while the captions (if turned on) would have "Maneater" added at the end.
• The song appears in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain as an in-game cassette tape.
• In 2015, the song also appeared in Rock Band 4.

In the internet

• In 2012 the song was used by Google as part of their advertisement campaign for their products, specifically the collaborative feature in Google Docs. The 30 second video purports to show Hall & Oates writing the lyrics for the song, and constantly editing each other's work until they settle on the final version.^[9]

Chart performance

See also

• List of Billboard Hot 100 number-singles of 1982
• List of Billboard Hot 100 number-singles of 1983

References

External links

• Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics
• VH1 VSPOT "Maneater"