Wolfgang Van Halen placed atop Guitar World‘s list of 2023’s best guitar riffs list with the Mammoth WVH song “Right?”
Wolfgang finished ahead of Greta Van Fleet’s “The Falling Sky” (Jacob Kiszka), and Metallica’s “72 Seasons” (Kirk Hammett) on Guitar World‘s list of the ten best riffs of the year as voted by GW’s staff and readers.
Here is what Guitar World‘s Jonathan Horsley had to say about the riff to “Right?”:
Riff of the year 2023, please come on down, Wolfgang Van Halen, a musician whose prodigious abilities are shared across guitar, bass guitar, drums, vocals. And you can choose your theory as to why. Nominative determinism? Maybe. Good genes? Definitely. His dedication is a given.
Right? is a a great example of WVH’s musical gifts forming like Voltron, with the rhythm guitar part sounding very much as though it was tapped out on a drum kit first. As performed, it locks in with the drums, propulsive, kinetic, leaving just enough melodic information to give the track its hook but definitely more preoccupied with the count.
Sometimes thinking like a drummer makes a riff better. Other times thinking like a bassist yields impressive results. But when you can think as all of them do, you see it from all the angles. You see it in Wolf vision.
Watch Live Performance Of “Right?”