Yesterday, on the 42nd anniversary on Van Halen’s debut album, we conducted a fan poll asking everyone to rank all the songs on the album. The poll, which is now closed, allowed people to drag-and-drop the song titles into their own personal order of how they ranked. The poll would not allow anyone to vote more than once (unless they used a different computer).
There were 2,327 people who voted! That’s a lot of people. In fact, that’s enough die-hard fans to truly see how popular each song is with the fans…. or at least a couple thousand fans who frequent the VHND. It’s probably the largest poll ever taken of how people like the songs on this album.
Here are the results, followed by our thoughts:
Fan Poll: RANK THE SONGS on ‘VAN HALEN’, from the best song (on top) to the worst (bottom)
So there you have it. “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” is the most-loved song on the album, practically tied with “Eruption,” which of course is not technically a song and could have even been separated from the others as a separate guitar solo/ instrumental. In fact, it is possibly the most popular guitar solo of all time, so, in hindsight, it’s kind of weird to rank it with actual songs. So perhaps we should have set it aside, and left if off the poll. Nevertheless, it’s good to see it at the top, appropriately.
Next, you have “Runnin’ with the Devil,” followed by “I’m The One,” followed by “Feel Your Love Tonight.”
But then the next three songs, “You Really Got Me,” “Jamie’s Cryin’,” and “Atomic Punk” had almost the exact same ranking, and could basically be thought of as a three-way tie.
Likewise, “Ice Cream Man” and “On Fire” had very close to the same ranking, and could be thought of as a two-way tie.
In last place was “Little Dreamer.” Even though it was voted the least-favorite song on the album, we think most fans would say they really like, or even love the song. THAT’s how strong this album is!
This is interesting… several songs on this album – maybe even most of them – are HUGE classic rock radio staples, which some people have heard hundreds of times on the radio… maybe even thousands of times. But that fact did not seem to hurt how they did in this poll! And that’s what’s so amazing about Van Halen. Despite hearing these songs so many times, they still sound so fresh, so powerful. They never fail to deliver the adrenaline charge!
We’ll do more fan polls like this from now on. Next time, we’ll allow fans more than one day to vote.