I’m identifying the best three albums by my fifty favorite rock bands of all time. This blog is for #11- Van Halen, a legendary classic hard-rock band.
Criteria for selecting the best three albums
First, Greatest Hits albums are not permitted. I will note Van Halen has multiple Greatest Hits albums that are really good. Second, no live albums are allowed. I saw both versions of Van Halen and Van Hagar in concert and I will tell you that this band put on quote a show. Third – I’m including one or more honorable mentions albums for the top twelve bands.
Van Halen albums ranked by ChatGPT
Let’s take a look at what artificial intelligence has to say about this list. According to ChatGPT, here are their top five albums based on sales and critical acclaim.
- 1984 (1984) – This album has the highest sales and contains some of their biggest hits like “Jump”, “Panama”, and “Hot for Teacher”. It’s often praised as one of their best works.
- Van Halen (1978) – Their debut album is highly acclaimed and was a massive commercial success. It introduced the band’s innovative sound and features hits like “Runnin’ With the Devil” and “Eruption”.
- 5150 (1986) – Their first album with Sammy Hagar debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
- Van Halen II (1979) – It followed the debut album’s success and contained multiple hits like “Dance the Night Away“ and “Beautiful Girls”.
- For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge (1991) – This album also topped the Billboard 200 and won a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance.
Quite a good list. The first four are excellent selections. Number five though is a surprise.
Spotify popular releases for this band
Next, let’s take a quick peek at some data from Spotify. According to this streaming platform here are their five most popular albums – 1984, debut, 5150, Van Halen 2, and the greatest hits. Once again an excellent list. It does include a greatest hits album which proves the point that Van Halen’s greatest hits albums are really good.
The third-best album by this band is 5150
The third-best album by Van Halen is called 5150. Diamond David Lee Roth quit the band and Sammy Hagar joined as his replacement. We all wondered whether this new combination would work. Boy did it ever. They dropped this bomb of an album and went on the 5150 worldwide tour. I saw them in concert. They were awesome and played several of the hit songs like “Why Can’t This Be Love”, “Dreams”, and my favorite Van Halen song of all time, “Summer Nights”.
The second-best album by Van Halen
The second-best album by Van Halen is 1984, their last record with David Lee Roth singing the vocals. This album is full of hit songs like “Jump” which was much maligned at the time by hardcore fans. Other hits included “Panama” and “Hot for Teacher”. Diamond Dave was great at making videos. They released accompanying videos for all those songs that did really well on MTV. Of course, this is back when the channel actually played music videos.
Honorable mention albums for this band
I picked two honorable mention albums. This band did not suffer a sophomore slump when they released Van Halen II. It includes the songs “Dance the Night Away”, and “Beautiful Girls”. The other honorable mention is OU812, an excellent album. It is a lot of fun and includes “Black and Blue”, “Cabo Wabo”, as well as “Finish What You Started”.
The best album by Van Halen
The best album by this legendary hard rock band is their self-titled debut record. We all learned listening to this album how unbelievably awesome a guitar player EVH was from the day he started playing till the day he left this world…may he rest in peace. This album includes the guitar solo “Eruption” as well as “Jamie’s Crying” and so many other good songs. If you want to know what music the kids were listening to in their basements in the late 70s – it was this album.
There you have it – the three best Van Halen albums. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
I am Doug Keating and this is my letter to my sons.