Songoftheday 2/6/16 - Don't draw the line honey I ain't through with you, the harder the better...

"Black And Blue" - Van Halen
from the album OU812 (1988)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #34 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 2

Today's song of the day comes from the hard rock band Van Halen, who survived the departure of original lead singer David Lee Roth by hiring on the Red Rocker himself, Sammy Hagar. With a change of sound veering more towards the synth than the guitar as the focus as was predicted by their massive "Jump" back in 1984, the "Van Hagar" lineup's first record together 5150 landed them a top-3 pop hit with "Why Can't This Be Love" along with top-40 followups "Dreams" and "Love Walks In". In 1988, the group returned with their eighth studio album OU812, and instead of leading with a pop radio-friendly track like WCTBL, the harder-edge "Black And Blue" was released as the first single, most likely to get rock radio on board early, especially with the guitar this time leading the way into a proposal to a potentially hurty romp in the bedroom...

While "Black and Blue" ended up topping Billboard's Album Rock radio chart for three weeks, it only slipped into the pop top 40 for a pair of weeks in June of 1988. In Canada, it peaked just under the top-40 at #42. It was quickly overshadowed by the more mainstream-friendly "When It's Love", which took over rather quickly (it'll be here on the bloggie in short time). But this was one of the first big examples of a "hype track" for the fans being released as a first single, which would later on be a standard...

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...and here's Van Halen performing the song live in Japan on tour in 1989...

Up tomorrow: A rapper and his friend have some closed-minded family.