#97/1264
March 24 1986
Van Halen
5150
Genre: Stadium Rock
3.75 out of 5
Highlights:
Why Can’t This Be Love
Get Up
Listening to Hagar choke out “Hello, Baby!” at the top of this record I can’t help but imagine how much better this would sound with Diamond Dave. Sammy is a perfectly fine vocalist for what he’s doing but he’s not Dave and it’s a different thing. And the “Hey, Waitress” stuff during “Good Enough” and “Inside” calls back “Hot for Teacher” in a way that seems to be simultaneously saying, “Hey, we didn’t forget what you loved about VH!” but also, “Fuck Dave, we can do this without him!”
Isn’t that what the title of “Good Enough” means? This version of Van Halen is “good enough” to sell records and t-shirts.
I actually like a lot of this record. I liked it when I did the first Van Halen retrospective and it’s perfectly acceptable rock-of-the-80s for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment