In light of Eddie Trunk's Van Halen Top 20 which got a lot of attention not only from fans, but from guys like Tom Morello, Dave Navarro, and John "5" Lowery (each of whom came up with their own Top 20 lists in response to Eddie's list).

I had never done a ranking of Van Halen's songs before, but it seemed like a good excuse to come up with my own Top 30 (20 just doesn't cut it with as many great songs as Van Halen has). My only ground rule was no cover songs. I even included multiple songs from Van Halen Zero.


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And here's Eddie's list (take this one with a grain of salt)...





What would you list as your Top 20 or 30 Van Halen songs??

And as Eddie has noted (as have others) this year marks the 40th Anniversary of the first Van Halen album. And the band is doing... nothing to acknowledge that anniversary.

But that does make this a great time to talk Van Halen.

Cradle Will Rock and Unchained are in my top 10.

Runnin' With The Devil
Unchained
And The Cradle Will Rock...
Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love
Mean Street
Everybody Wants Some!!
Panama
Jamie's Cryin'
Somebody Get Me A Doctor
Dance The Night Away
D.O.A.
Why Can't This Be Love
Poundcake
Beautiful Girls
Romeo Delight
Best Of Both Worlds
Little Guitars
Hot For Teacher
So This Love?
Atomic Punk
Drop Dead Legs
Women In Love
On Fire
Black And Blue
When It's Love
The Seventh Seal
I'll Wait
Right Now
She's The Woman
Top Of The World

Little Guitars is my favorite VH tune, followed by DOA, Unchained, Somebody Get Me A Doctor, Light Up The Sky... damn this is tough.

I separate Van Halen and Van Hagar. They are two separate bands.

Ain't Talkin Bout Love
Atomic Punk
I'm The One
Jamie's Cryin
Dance The Night Away
Somebody Get Me A Doctor
Light Up The Sky
Bottoms Up
And The Cradle Will Rock
Romeo Delight
Everybody Wants Some
Mean Street
Dirty Movies
Sinners Swing
Unchained
So This Love
Sunday Afternoon In The Park/One Foot Out The Door
Hang Em High
Little Guitars
Jump
Panama
Top Jimmy
Drop Dead Legs
Hot For Teacher
Girl Gone Bad
House Of Pain
Me Wise Magic
Blood And Fire
As If
Chinatown

As for the Hagar shit:
Why Can't This Be Love
Summer Nights
5150
Mine All Mine
Feels So Good
Source Of Infection
Sucker In A 3-Piece
Poundcake
Judgment Day
Humans Being

Same gere and I almost did it that way. 20 for Halen, 10 for Hagar.

It's amazing how different the band is when you replace Roth with Hagar. They went from a fun lovin' party band, to a more serious, grown up version of the group.


I will never forget I went to high school with the biggest Van Halen fan you could ever meet. He even had one of the VH necklaces, which he wore every, single day.

When the news broke that the band replaced Roth with Hagar, you would have thought his dog died or something. He was a total zombie for about a week. I often wonder what happened to that guy? He reminds me of Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Conversely, you could say they went from a hard rock powerhouse to synth-driven pop drivel.

Excluding covers

Entire first album
Somebody Get Me a Doctor
Outta Love Again
D.O.A.
Women In Love
Beautiful Girls
And The Cradle Will Rock
Everybody Wants some
Mean Street
Unchained
Panama
Hot For Teacher

Summer Nights
Best of Both Worlds
Sucker in A Three Piece
Finish What Ya Started
Runaround
Poundcake
Humans Being
Amsterdam
Seventh Seal
Don't Tell Me What Love Do

Which is kinda funny because solo Sammy seems more of a fun lovin' party guy than Van Halen with Dave.

Never understood hate for Van Hagar unless you dislike all Hagar music. Liking Sammy solo but not liking his Van Halen stuff doesn't make sense. It's basically all the same. Some of Sammy's best stuff was in Van Halen. Is this some kind of weird Yoko thing?

Hagar had always bounced between doing serious songs and party all the time. Stayed the same with Van Halen. It's only now that he seems to have abandoned the idea of doing multiple songs that are not about booze and women.

No, it's just the fact that VH went from being a badass Hard Rock band that often bordered on old school Heavy Metal to being a slick Pop Rock band that often bordered on Hard Rock.

There were only 3 or 4 songs per Van Hagar album that were worthy of the Van Halen name in terms of musical style. That's why a lot of fans dislike Van Hagar so much.

I love how those that hate Van Hagar act like that the change in style hadn't already started with Diver Down and 1984. Very few 70's band made it through the late 80's without changing things up at least a little. To quote a great song from that era "conform or be cast out." If you wanted to be on heavy rotation on the radio, or MTV, you made changes.

Yeah, with 1984 and songs like "Jump" you could hear they were moving in a poppier direction and appealing to the 80s preppie/jock crowd, but 5150 was a really radical departure with Hagar on vocals and all of the keyboards. Didn't remotely sound like the same band. Eat'em and Smile sounded more like a proper Van Halen album than 5150.

Interesting bit of personal trivia: "Jump" was the first time I had ever heard of Van Halen. I was just a kid at the time, and for all I knew they were a new band.

I love Montrose, and very much liked most of Sammy's solo stuff that I heard (my first rock concert was Bryan Adams, Sammy Hagar, Aerosmith, and Journey in 1983).

Van Hagar just never appealed to me. It was... aggravating to my ears. Crap like Dreams, Poundcake, When It's Love, Right Now, On Top of the World, Love Marches In, all that junk. Ugh. Drivel.

I will cop to liking Why Can't This Be Love quite a bit NOW. Hated it then though. Finish What You Started was fun too.

A big part of the deal for me with Roth-era Van Halen was the stage presence. A notable difference when compared to Van Hagar. Roth was so full of himself it sort of became comically entertaining. This was catapulted further during his solo work.

There are two Van Hagar songs I do really like though: Humans Being and Can't Stop Loving You (though the Balance album is pretty weak).

Glad to see Me Wise Magic make it on someone's list. I can appreciate Runnin' with the Devil, but simply cannot listen to that song any more. Heard it one too many times.

Also, can't forget VH III

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I actually like a few songs off VH III, but not enough to include in the top 30.

Personally the only thing I always held against Van Hagar is he was such a bad fit when they would play the Roth songs. But since they immediately included a few Hagar/Montrose and other cover songs in their setlists, the impact was minimal.

I'm not a fan of the band, but "Jump" is still one of my most-loved songs ever.

Poor Gary Cherone. A very good vocalist, and great with Extreme.
Just didn't work out with VH for him.

Panama.

Air guitar heaven whether you're rhythm or lead.

Jump fans should check this out (if they haven't lareayd seen it). A friend of the Foo's recently showed me this video.

https://www.jambase.com/article/foo-...an-halens-jump

I'm a big fan of Extreme and it was always obvious to me that Gary was a very bad fit for VH. Not sure what the hell any of them were thinking.

I'm glad they didn't do that when I saw them last year. Ugh.