Songfacts®:

• This song was penned by Daryl Hall. Speaking with American Songwriter magazine February 14th, 2013, he explained its theme was that only the strong survive. "It's a song that could have been called 'Abandoned Lives.' It's about people who gave up and wound up in the same place they started in, only not as good," he said.
• The song also served as the title track of Hall & Oates sophomore album. It was Hall who suggested the LP name after recalling an abandoned diner that was near his grandmother's house outside of Pottstown, Pennsylvania. He told American Songwriter: "I said, 'This place is all falling down. Let's take a photographer up there and take a picture.' So that's what we did. The cops came and threw us out because we were trespassing on somebody's property. But we did manage to get the pictures that we wanted, and that's where the whole idea and the concept of the album cover came from. It really didn't come from the song, it was just coincidental."
  
  The photographer was Oates' girlfriend at the time, Barbara Wilson, who is credited as "B. Wilson" on the inside album sleeve.
• Abandoned Luncheonette was certified platinum (over one million copies sold) 29 years after its release by the Recording Industry Association of America.
• Hall & Oates fans shouldn't plan any pilgrimages to the abandoned luncheonette that inspired the song. The Rosedale Diner was burned down in the early-'80s to clear the property.