Songoftheday 10/9/19 - There's a time and place for everything for everyone, we can push with all our might but nothin's gonna come...
from the album Balance (1995)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #30 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 9
Today's song of the day comes from the veteran hard rock band Van Halen, whose 1991 album For Unlawful Common Knowledge (giggity) was one of their most successful records, even though it only produced one top-40 pop hit, with "Top Of The World" which made the level in the fall of 1991. Two years later, the band released a double-CD live album, Live: Right Here, Right Now, that was so comprehensive it almost served as a greatest hits album in itself. A cover of the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" from it went to #1 on Billboard magazine's Mainstream Rock radio chart, while a live take of their own hit "Jump" returned the song to the British top-40 at #26.
The group returned in 1995 with the fourth and final album they did with singer/guitarist Sammy Hagar, Balance. Their tenth disc overall, the record was very contentiously recorded with feuding between Eddie Van Halen and Hagar carried throughout. The lead single from the set, "Don't Tell Me (What Love Can Do)", was a punchy inspirational song that spent three weeks at #1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart, and returned them to the British top-40 at #27. The album opener "The Seventh Seal" was released next, and the more experimental sounding tune stopped at #36 on that same chart. It would be the third offering from the album that would bring the band back to mainstream pop radio for one more go. "Can't Stop Lovin' You", written by the band's Eddie and Alex Van Halen, Hagar, and bassist Michael Anthony, was a slice of pop-rock that was simple yet not corny...
"Can't Stop Lovin' You" became Van Halen's sixteenth and so far final top-40 pop hit in June of 1995. The song spent a month (four weeks) at #2 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart. Internationally, the song was huge in Canada, peaking at #3, while reaching the top-40 in Iceland (#19) and the UK (#33). The album track "Amsterdam" was put out next to rock radio, and reached #9 on the Mainstream Rock chart, and got to #46 in Canada and #77 in the UK. A final release from the record, "Not Enough", which attempted to be the album's "Right Now", managed to slip on to the pop chart at #97, while making it to #27 on the Mainstream Rock list, and was a minor British hit at #77. "The Seventh Seal" ended up getting nominated for Best Rock Performance at the 1996 Grammy Awards, losing out to Pearl Jam's "Spin The Black Circle".
The band toured with Bon Jovi, but tensions between Hagar and Van Halen grew to a point where he left after the recording of a one-off track for the movie Twister, "Humans Being", which went to #1 on the Mainstream Rock radio list. Also making the Canadians who took the track to #47, the song ended up on their compilation Best Of Volume 1. Reuniting with original singer David Lee Roth, Van Halen's next hit from the wig would be "Me Wise Magic", which again topped the Mainstream Rock radio chart for a big six week. But despite that success, the band continued on with neither Roth nor Hagar, but with their removed also punkish white persona, they instead chose Gary Cherrone of the band Extreme ("More Than Words") that caused me to double-take from the choice. The resulting album, Van Halen III, seemed to be dead at the gate, even though the lead single "Without You" seemed promising, spending a huge six weeks at #1 on the Mainstream Rock chart in the spring of 1998. Also, single "Fire In The Hole", which appeared in the Lethal Weapon 4 movie, reached #6 on the Mainstream Rock list as well. But the album, which debuted at #4, fell out pretty quickly, and the whole project seemed dead in the water from the get go, and Cherrone's tenure with Van Halen wouldn't even last to another album. Another "hits" album, Best Of Both Worlds, reunited Van Halen with Sammy Hagar again, and scored another top ten rock hit with "It's About Time" in 2004. The band also was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame in 2007. But Hagar didn't last, as did Michael Anthony, who had been essentially pushed out by Eddie for years seemingly to bring his own son in. It would take eight more years for the three Van Halens plus yes again David Lee Roth for their most recent album A Different Kind Of Truth. Made up of all reworked and re-recorded demos from their heyday, the album was a success, reaching #2, while first single "Tattoo" hit the Mainstream Rock chart at #13 and the American pop Hot 100 at #67. Follow-up "She's The Woman" peaked at #23, their most recent charting single. Although they've been quiet since a reunion tour with Roth in 2015, their future remains up in the air.
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Here's Van Halen on tour behind the album in 1995...
And lastly, appearing on Jon Stewart's old talk show to promote the album...
Up tomorrow: Canadian rocker has a question about sexual history.
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