The Five Worst and Five Most Underrated Van Halen Songs

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The Five Worst and Five Most Underrated Van Halen Songs
By Darryl Smyers Wed., Jun. 20 2012 at 8:05 AM
Categories: Listomania

Seeing that Van Halen somehow managed to NOT cancel their show tonight at American Airlines Center, I decided to go through the band’s catalogue and come up with a couple of lists. First comes the bad, and then comes the diamonds in the poo-poo.

The Five Worst Van Halen Songs

1. “Hot for Teacher”
Van Halen always catered to the lowest common denominator of middle school boys, but this song always struck me as particularly stupid. Plus, it could have inspired Mary Kay Letourneau.

2. “Eruption”
If I only had a dollar for every band dude who has told me, “You’ve got to hear our guitarist. He can almost play ‘Eruption’.”

3. “Dancing in the Streets”
Why do bands cover this song?

4. “Jump”
The cool chorus was instantly made limp by the most simplistic synthesizer riff in the history of rock music.

5. Any song sung by Sammy Hagar or Gary Cherone

The Five Most Underrated Van Halen Songs

1. “Could This Be Magic?”
Acoustic Van Halen? Sacrilege back in the day, but this song from Women and Children First holds up just fine today.

2. “Sunday Afternoon in the Park”
From Fair Warning. Eddie goes progressive rock and it kind of, sort of works. A dark precursor of things to come and there’s not a single Diamond Dave yelp to be heard.

3. “Light up the Sky”
One of the highlights of the disappointing Van Halen II. I could be wrong, but this song actually shows, God help me, a little restraint.

4. “I’ll Wait”
This new wave ditty from 1984 would have made a great outtake from Soft Cell.

5. “House of Pain”
The final cut from 1984 showed the band could still rock. The (at the time) last shout from David Lee Roth and, for me, the end of Van Halen.

Any song sung by Sammy Hagar or Cherone? Apparently this person has not seen or heard Dave on this tour. Sammy or Cherone can easily sing anything Roth recorded. I highly doubt Dave could sing Dreams, Right Now or any of the Hagar era tunes. Tired of the Sammy vs Roth crap we have been fortunate to have the best of both through the years. If they were smart they would all grow up and tour with both guys and create the biggest tour in rock history!

I don’t know how Hot for Teacher and Eruption can be the two worst songs, that’s silly. I do agree with Dancing in the Streets though, I’ve never been able to get into that song.

As far as underrated, sure Could This Be Magic is underrated, but it’s not because it was sacrilege for Eddie to play acoustic guitar. Edward played acoustic on Ice Cream Man and Spanish Fly prior to that and I don’t think any VH fans rebellled.

I don’t think this dude was around when CVH was together.

Darryl Smyers is an idiot. Yes entitled to his own opinion but an idiot in my opinion.

I have come to the conclusion through the years that most rock critics have never played an instrument but have played with themselves entirely too much as a child and as an adult. We used to have a rock critic in Chicago who ripped Cheap Trick when they played their first big venue here The Auditorium Theatre. He said they looked lost on a big stage and are nothing more than a bar band. A short time later they played a bar called Budokan and the rest was history!

videoman320: Any song sung by Sammy Hagar or Cherone? Apparently this person has not seen or heard Dave on this tour. Sammy or Cherone can easily sing anything Roth recorded. I highly doubt Dave could sing Dreams, Right Now or any of the Hagar era tunes. Tired of the Sammy vs Roth crap we have been fortunate to have the best of both through the years. If they were smart they would all grow up and tour with both guys and create the biggest tour in rock history!

Oh man… where to begin?

Roth would never have to sing any garbage from the hagar era, so just stop it. That’s a weak argument at best. Not to mention, the reverse is true – fat-ass can’t sing Dave ear songs properly. Have you heard him butcher the 3-4 tunes he was willing to destroy during his tenure? There’s nothing fortunate about sam turning the buggest rock band on the planet into a bunch of pussies.
VH is Dave with Eddie, period. The swagger, the attitude and the fun. I have zero interest in seeing that fat lying clown on stage with Ed. Ever. Go crank ou812 and have a nice day.

videoman320:
I have come to the conclusion through the years that most rock critics have never played an instrument but have played with themselves entirely too much as a child and as an adult. We used to have a rock critic in Chicago who ripped Cheap Trick when they played their first big venue here The Auditorium Theatre. He said they looked lost on a big stage and are nothing more than a bar band. A short time later they played a bar called Budokan and the rest was history!

Love Cheap Trick! but HFT worst song? How about How Many Say I?

jroundy: How Many Say I…..gets the number one worst VH song, and I don’t even hate it.First time I heard it though, I almost gagged.

Ha! Yeah, I recall the first time I heard it… it just blew me away that it was on a VH album… I think I’ve listened to that song twice at most.