Classic Albums: Van Halen - 1984

1984 (written as MCMLXXXIV on the front cover) was the sixth studio by Van Halen and one of the band's more popular albums. The album's original release credits all songs to Edward Van Halen, Alex Van Halen, Michael Anthony and David Lee Roth. Like many bands starting out on their career, Van Halen shared songwriting credit equally between all members (including guitar instrumentals, which were clearly composed only by Edward Van Halen), but subsequent claims would lend credibility to the view that all songs were entirely or predominantly written by Edward Van Halen (music) and David Lee Roth (lyrics and vocal melody). Later Anthony was removed from all songwriting credits on the 1984 album.


1984 peaked at #2 on the Billboard Magazine album charts (#1 at the time was Thriller, which featured an Eddie Van Halen guitar solo on "Beat It) and contained future hits "Jump", "Panama", "I'll Wait", and "Hot for Teacher". "Jump" reached #1 on the magazine's singles chart. 1984 is the second of two Van Halen albums to have sold 10 million copies in the United States.

"Jump" was one of the most successful songs of 1984 and was on the 10 most played songs on the radio that year. As a single, it sold over three million copies alone, making it one of the most popular rock songs of that decade. "Panama" was the third single from the album and reached number 13 on the singles chart in June. The keyboard-driven "I'll Wait" was another single, reaching number 13 on the singles chart in March 1984.

"Hot for Teacher", a humorous song about a grade-school crush, was also a hit, reaching #56 on the Billboard Hot 100, as well as spawning a popular MTV video starring pre-teen lookalikes of the band members. It's also featured in the video game Guitar Hero: World Tour. The sexually suggestive song was best known for its long opening drum solo, near motorcycle-like drum fills and its music video featuring the band as both adults and young students in a high school. The Parents Music Resource Center protested it, calling for it to be pulled from both the radio and television, due to the song's sexually suggestive lyrics referring to sex with a teacher, and a beautiful female teacher stripping in the video, among other issues. In 2009 it was named the 36th best hard rock song of all time by VH1. Since then the song has been closely connected and used in media with female teacher male student sexual relationship cases.

When this album was released in the United Kingdom, a removable sticker with the roman numerals MCMLXXXIV (which is "1984"), had to be placed over the cherub's hand, as it was holding a cigarette and there happened to be a non-smoking campaign happening at the time. The same protocol was upheld for several other bands' albums as well, such as the UK release of Canadian rocker Kim Mitchell's album Akimbo Alogo, where the entire cover was changed due to a smoking reference.