- This song is about a very seductive woman with expensive tastes that she uses men to satisfy. Much like the line “Her mind is Tiffany twisted” in the Eagles song “Hotel California,” the lyrics to this song use a luxury brand to develop the character as she is described as “a she-cat tamed by the purr of a Jaguar,” referring to the high-end automobile.
- This was a showcase song for Hall & Oates sax player Charles “Mr. Casual” DeChant, who appears in the video during his solo.The song spent four weeks at #1 in America, making it the biggest US hit of the ’80s to feature a sax solo.
- In 2006, Nelly Furtado released a song called “Maneater” that was influenced by this. >>>
- This is one of several Hall & Oates songs that Daryl Hall’s longtime girlfriend Sara Allen had a hand in writing – she’s credited on the track along with the duo. According to Hall, his original lyric had some additional words in the chorus after “she’s a maneater.” Allen convinced him to end the line there, which Hall says made the song come together.When we spoke with Hall in 2015, he explained that despite their romantic interest, writing songs with Allen was never a problem. “She was really good at jumping into my thoughts and helping me to sort of coalesce them,” he said.
- The video for this song was a disjointed affair, which was typical of 1982 in the early days of MTV. Hall & Oates took little interest in their videos, so directors hired by their record company could get away with just about anything. “Maneater” is mostly tight shots of the band performing in what looks like an after-hours champagne room, with occasional shots of a girl juxtaposed with a panther. Daryl Hall said in the book I Want My MTV: “Somebody decided the ‘Maneater’ video wouldn’t be complete unless we had an actual panther, a man-eating animal, in the video. It appeared for a second and a half in the video and probably cost $10,000.”Hall adds that for most of the shoot, the panther was leashed to the floor, but at one point it got loose and started roaming the rafters. This is when he left.
- “Maneater” was used on the soundtrack to the Julia Roberts and Richard Gere movie Runaway Bride, a story about a woman with a reputation of jilting her fiancés at the altar. >>>
- This endured as one of the most popular songs by the duo, and it’s very often the first song they play in concert. What’s it like playing a song from 1982 decades later? When we spoke with John Oates in 2011, he told us: “We were very fortunate that a lot of those became big hits. And these songs have stood the test of time. So we’re proud of pretty much everything we’ve done, and when we play live, we play those songs and we’re happy to play them.”
- To promote the book The Manny by Holly Peterson, a video was created that spoofed this song, with the lyrics changed to be about a male nanny. >>>
- Grace Mitchell covered this song for the soundtrack to the 2013 movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, starring Ben Stiller and Kristen Wiig.
