Initial, eventually-junked work on this album with the British team behind recent banal smashes by Enrique Iglesias, and the title track’s No 1 success on America’s “Adult” chart, show the taste-tightrope Hall & Oates walk right now. Recent compilations revealed how their Philly soul roots mutated into monstrously beat-slamming, melodic synth-soul; supreme ’80s pop craft. Do It For Love instead teeters near the pretty vacancy of today’s blue-eyed chart acts. Only the duo’s ear for a hook, Hall’s still-soaring voice, and Rundgren’s help on an eccentric cover of The New Radicals’ “Someday We’ll Know” keeps them special, just.
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