1976 · Behind the Songs
Buried on the album that gave the duo their first No. 1, a four-and-a-half-minute statement of independence.
In 1976, Daryl Hall and John Oates were caught between two careers. Behind them lay the cult years: respected albums, modest sales, a reputation as blue-eyed soul craftsmen. Ahead lay the imperial phase: ‘Rich Girl,’ their first No. 1, was already on the tapes. ‘Do What You Want, Be What You Are’ sits exactly on that fault line. The song is the fourth track on Bigger Than Both of Us, the duo’s fifth studio album, released in August 1976 on RCA, and it runs 4:33 — the longest song on the record’s first side. Hall and Oates wrote it together, and it plays like a mission statement from two musicians who had decided to stop asking permission.
Bigger Than Both of Us was recorded in March and April 1976 at Cherokee Studios and Hollywood Sound Labs in Hollywood, with Christopher Bond producing. The album peaked at No. 13 on the Billboard Top 200, and its singles tell the story of a duo arriving: ‘Do What You Want, Be What You Are’ went out first in 1976, followed by ‘Rich Girl’ in January 1977 — the first of their six No. 1 singles on the Hot 100 — and ‘Back Together Again,’ which reached No. 28. The record’s blend of rock and soul, polished but not slick, was the sound of two writers learning to trust their instincts. The song’s message — do what you want, be what you are — could stand as the album’s working philosophy.
The session crew reads like a who’s who of seventies Los Angeles. Leland Sklar played bass, Jim Gordon and Ed Greene split the drumming, and Tom Scott contributed saxophone, flute, and the Lyricon, an early wind synthesizer. Christopher Bond, the producer, played lead guitar and keyboards and handled the string and horn arrangements. Hall sang lead and played keyboards and synthesizer; Oates sang, played guitar and harmonica, and shared arranging duties. It was a big, professional room, and you can hear the confidence in the track: this is a band — or rather, a duo with the best hired hands in town — playing like people who know exactly what they’re doing.
The song traveled further than its chart performance suggested. In 1979, the Dramatics, the Detroit soul group, covered ‘Do What You Want, Be What You Are,’ a tribute that confirmed what the song’s gospel-tinged groove had always implied: this was soul music, whatever the marketing said. The lyric is a gentle rebuke to conformity, addressed as much to the music business as to anyone. Hall and Oates had spent years being told to be more commercial, more this, more that; the song answers by refusing the premise. Its defiance is all the more striking for how warm it sounds. This isn’t a sneer — it’s an embrace, extended to anyone who ever felt hemmed in.
The song feels built for the stage: its call-and-response energy and its slow-burn groove are the sound of two singers daring a room to sing along. It never became one of their chart monsters, and that may be why it aged so well — never overexposed, never reduced to a nostalgia cue. Instead it remains what it was in 1976, a statement of intent from two songwriters at the exact moment they stopped hedging their bets. Every later triumph — the six No. 1s, the sold-out arenas — is implicit in this track’s confidence. Some songs are hits; this one is a foundation.
What to listen for: the groove first. The rhythm section — Sklar’s bass, the Gordon-Greene drums — lays down a slow, confident strut that gives Hall room to preach. Listen to how the backing vocals answer him, the duo’s famous blend already fully formed. Tom Scott’s saxophone curls around the edges, and the Lyricon adds an otherworldly shimmer that dates the track to 1976 in the best way. And notice the song’s patience: at 4:33 it takes its time, building verse by verse instead of rushing to a hook. The hook, when it comes, is the title itself, repeated like a mantra. Do what you want. Be what you are. It is less a chorus than a benediction.
There is a reason the song sounds like a turning point: it was one. The RCA years — Bigger Than Both of Us, Beauty on a Back Street, Along the Red Ledge, X-Static — were the duo’s apprenticeship, the stretch where they learned to write hits without losing themselves. ‘Do What You Want, Be What You Are’ is the thesis statement for that whole period, recorded just before ‘Rich Girl’ proved they could have both integrity and airplay. It is tempting to hear the song as a message to their label, their producers, or the industry at large. More likely it was a message to themselves, a reminder written at the moment of greatest doubt. Whatever the intended audience, the advice holds up. Forty years of hindsight have not improved on it.
Put the song on next to the hits and it holds its own — not because it shouts louder, but because it means more. The hits are brilliant craft; this is something rarer, a commercial pop record about refusing to be merely commercial. Hall and Oates would spend the next decade proving the song’s point, bending the industry to their will rather than the reverse. It all started here, in a Hollywood studio in the spring of 1976, with two young men, a great band, and four words that still work as a life philosophy: do what you want, be what you are.
That is the final paradox of ‘Do What You Want, Be What You Are.’ A song about independence became the property of everyone who ever needed to hear it — covered by soul legends, sung by arena crowds, and still, nearly fifty years later, sounding like advice worth taking.