All 131 Van Halen Songs Ranked

[ZahZoo]

Fun read... I don't agree with some of the author's ranking choices, but the commentary for each song is entertaining as hell.

http://www.vulture.com/2018/09/chuck-klosterman-ranks-all-131-van-halen-songs.html

118. “Source of Infection,” OU812 (1988)
Sammy Hagar has cited this as a VH song he does not like, admitting they were just drunkenly goofing around in the studio. The lyrics appear to have been generated by the world’s stupidest computer. That said, I find myself mildly awed by how well these boozehounds can play their instruments shit-faced.

[Seshmeister]

I'm not sure I can get much further with a list that ranks 'How Many Say I' above anything never mind a couple of songs from ADKOT.

Seems a bit random...

[Seshmeister]

His ranking for the songs on ADKOT from best to worst.

Outta Space
Beats Workin
You and Your Blues
She's The Woman
Big River
Bullethead
Blood And Fire
Stay Frosty
As Is
Honeybabysweetiedoll
China Town
The Trouble With Never
Tattoo

I don't get where he's coming from here and neither do the Van Halens judging by the song order on the album...

[FORD]

Read this article on my phone the other day out of boredom while I was installing a new Linux distro on the PC. Dude's rankings are all over the place, and can't agree with a lot of them. But he's a fairly decent review writer otherwise. Has to be the best description of "Right Now" that I have ever read.

The sonic architecture is brilliant and the message is heartfelt, so the only real problem is that it makes me want to shoot myself in the pancreas. I know it’s thoughtful and mechanically sound, but give me a fucking break. A song like “Right Now” is a little like the movie Dead Poets Society: There’s a time in every life when certain thoughts feel mind-blowing and profound, usually because you’ve never heard someone else intellectually elucidate a human condition you’ve always intuitively felt. But the moment you move beyond that age, those same thoughts become obvious (and then inane).

[ZahZoo]

It's all pretty subjective for each listener... then there's also certain songs that are tied to each person's emotional linkage to personal events that can greatly influence a love or hate for a song... not necessarily based on any technical or compositional merits.

I agree that How Many Say I should be at 131... and most of III in the bottom 25. I'd have a tough time ranking any Van Hagar tunes in the top 40 with the exception of 2-3 and those are just based on some of Ed's guitar work really appealed to my musician's side of my brain.

[Seshmeister]

The thread did remind me that there are quite a few ‘Van Halen’ songs I still haven’t heard.

Sometimes I do try and listen to another one. This time it was Neworld. Wow what was the point of that?

[ZahZoo]

The thread did remind me that there are quite a few ‘Van Halen’ songs I still haven’t heard.

Sometimes I do try and listen to another one. This time it was Neworld. Wow what was the point of that?

In a deep enough stupor induced by drugs and alcohol... it was an earth shattering instrumental. Why it didn't hit the killing floor baffles me...

[degüello]

I think debating the ranking level of the songs is missing the point. Totally subjective and different for everyone. The “meat” of the piece is the commentary, which I found hugely entertaining and laugh-out-loud funny at times.

I loved this:

“Hear About It Later,” Fair Warning (1981)
My interpretation of this song always fixates on the image of David Lee Roth talking to his girlfriend (or whatever constitutes the equivalent of a girlfriend in Dave World). He’s explaining that the moral complexities of his occupation as an arena rock frontman might result in unintended consequences that will contradict his role as a responsible partner, and — if this eventuality does, in fact, transpire — he does not want to hear about it later (because they’ve already talked about it once).

And this had me laughing in bed and trying not to wake up my wife:

“Poundcake,” For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge (1991)
Van Halen (and especially Van Hagar) is now widely considered “dad rock,” a term that’s only insulting if you hate children. “Poundcake” involves the use of a handheld electric drill, so this is as dad-rockin’ as paternally possible.

[private parts]

Great writer! Reminds me of the old journalist of Cream magazine. Really sharp tongued. Kind of like a less bitchy Kristy.
Some of my favorite lines....

“Everybody Wants Some!!” Women and Children First (1980)
That said, it’s impossible to imagine their catalogue without this tune, in the same way it’s impossible to imagine Rollie Fingers without a handlebar mustache.

“Atomic Punk,” Van Halen (1978)
.. I didn’t like this song when I was a little guy, but it has aged like J.Lo. They could put this out tomorrow and humans would explode.

“On Fire,” Van Halen (1978)
Dave instructs all the kids to “turn your radios on” and “throw your headphones on” and generally get with the goddamn program. Three minutes of nuclear meltdown, along with one bonus second to ash your cigarette.

“I’m the One,” Van Halen (1978)
The takeaway is that this is genuinely insane mainstream rock music, performed by musicians who are always in complete control of the insanity they’re creating.

“Somebody Get Me a Doctor,” Van Halen II (1979)
....this would have been a great tune for Ozzy, particularly since the titular “doctor” is either a bartender or a door-to-door syringe salesman.

“Runnin’ With the Devil,” Van Halen (1978)
There are clips all over the internet of Dave’s isolated vocals, and I understand why people think all his decontextualized yowling is hilarious. But he’s yowling on pitch, he has a bank vault of 22 autonomous yowls, and yowls aren’t supposed to be decontextualized.

“Dance the Night Away,” Van Halen II (1979)
The crowning achievement of Michael Anthony’s John Cazale-like career as a background vocalist, there are dozens of little details here that could be obsessed over and expanded upon (the cowbell, the moment where Roth nearly laughs at his own caterwauling, the way the melody captures the specific atmosphere of a June evening five minutes before twilight, et al). But the more essential truth is that this song just makes people feel good. You can’t listen to “Dance the Night Away” without feeling good. This should be the hold music for suicide prevention hotlines.

“Eruption,” Van Halen (1978)
....But suddenly he’s back, and now he’s attacking the instrument the way piranhas skeletonize a water buffalo, and then he does that thing that he always does and your living room speakers transmogrify into the P-Funk Mothership and ascend through the roof and into the troposphere. It ends with the Doppler effect, except you haven’t moved and neither has he. This is, by the widest possible margin, the most important freestanding guitar solo of all time. And I realize that if you hate Van Halen, this is precisely what you hate. You hate the sensation of having your brain trapped in a beehive, you hate the distance between the proficiency of the artist and the potentiality of his audience, and you hate that this guy just invented the 1980s. But if you love Van Halen, this is what you love, and you can listen to it a thousand times without diminishing returns. The experience does not evolve. You will always be inside that guitar.

[silverfish]

I think debating the ranking level of the songs is missing the point.

Exactly. Trunk even discussing the list is ridiculous.
Nobody is gonna agree with anyone's list or ranking
so why even bother.

Hey Eddie - give us your 131 countdown and let someone critique that list.

Douce.

[Seshmeister]

Trunk is a fat oaf.

[Terry]

The basic structure of the list from worst to best is along the lines I would have imagined were I doing one myself, which for the most part is the Van Halen III tracks at the bottom, the Van Hagar stuff in the middle, the CVH stuff at the top and the ADKOT/BOV1 Roth tracks dispersed between the bottom middle and top. Some of the Van Hagar tracks on a purely instrumental level (Pleasuredome, 5150) resonate a bit more with me than, say, an ADKOT track such as The Trouble With Never (which, to my ears, sounds like one of the lesser tracks on the DLR Band album: an album that I actually liked quite a bit, but that track itself IS filler to my ears, and hearing it played live in 2012 didn't improve it).

I also enjoyed the song by song commentary.

Eruption as the #1? I suppose that brief solo did have quite an impact on a whole era of guitarists. In retrospect, that impact from my memory wasn't exactly a positive one, as it sent legions of budding guitar players scrambling to figure out how Eddie did it, and the result was hearing dozens of Eddie clones in major label 1980s bands (and thousands of guitar store wannabes) copping Eddie's licks...all of which grew incredibly stale long before the 80s closed, because it seemed like the net result of Eddie's influence became an emphasis on flash as opposed to an emphasis on great songs. And that was the thing for CVH for me: yeah, they had the show-offish flash/live theatrics, but all of that was second to the songs themselves. Too many bands obviously directly influenced by CVH focused on the former at the expense of the latter.

[TongueNGroove]

My top 10 Van Halen songs are...

10...Dance the Night Away
9...Cathedral
8...Little Guitars
7...Spanish Fly
6...Eruption
5...Hot For Teacher
4...Panama
3...Jump
2...Drop Dead Leggs
1...5150

[Nickdfresh]

My top 10 Van Halen songs are...

10...Dance the Night Away
9...Cathedral
8...Little Guitars
7...Spanish Fly
6...Eruption
5...Hot For Teacher
4...Panama
3...Jump
2...Drop Dead Leggs
1...5150

What? GET OUT!!




JK

[FORD]

My top 10 Van Halen songs are...


1...5150