Songfacts®:

• This was first recorded by the British musician Mike Oldfield and included on his 1982 album Five Miles Out with vocals by Maggie Reilly (Oldfield wrote the song with Reilly, guitarist Rick Fenn, keyboard player Tim Cross and drummer Mike Frye). Issued as a single, Oldfield's original "Family Man" reached #45 on the UK charts. The next year, a version by Daryl Hall and John Oates became an international hit.
• The song is about a chance meeting between a prostitute and a married man who is tempted, but insists he is not interested in her services, imploring her to leave him alone because he's a family man. This just makes her more determined, so she lowers her price and flirts; he is tempted, but by the time he is ready to succumb, she's gone.
  
  In Oldfield's original, the ending is more ambiguous, as the man and woman are still negotiating.
• In our 2015 interview with Daryl Hall, he said that he came across this song when he heard his keyboard tech playing it. "I knew it was a song that had potential," he said. "I could tell. I was looking for a different sound on that record [H2O], and I thought, Nobody's ever going to hear this song if I don't record it."
• This is featured in the 2006 video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories.
• Maggie Reilly re-recorded this song for her 2009 album, Looking Back, Moving Forward.
• The video was directed by Mick Haggerty, who did several Hall & Oates videos, including "Maneater" and "One on One." He got around the issue of prostitution by representing the girl in the song with a small cartoon icon. The video plays up the "family" theme, with the duo becoming overwhelmed by children.