With the band firmly established with Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony, Eddie Van Halen and Alex Van Halen, let’s look at the eighth studio album for the band Van Halen. Depending on the source, the album OU812 (Oh, you ate one too!) was released either May 20th or May 24th, 1988. The album itself has landed in the album rock, hard rock, heavy metal and pop metal genres, as suggested by All Music (American online music database).
Mine All Mine opens OU812 with an aggressive sounding riff offering an inescapable declaration about the trappings of success. While some get lost in believing success rests in the attainment of those trappings, Sammy and the band give us the view that something a little more tangible, long lasting and theirs is what they want. I’ll leave it to you to decide how this commentary lands among the different lead singer of the band over time.
When It’s Love topped out at 28th on the United Kingdom charts and 5th in the United States. An anthem of recognizing the feelings of love, this song landed really close to the heart for my 13-year-old self. The song was “a group collaboration on writing, with brothers Eddie and Alex Van Halen having composed the music first and Sammy Hagar writing the lyrics afterwards,” as noted on SongFacts here. The power ballad phenomenon of the late 1980s is well represented with this tune.
A.F.U. (Naturally Wired) reminds us that Van Halen indeed is a band including a drummer, a bass guitarist, a lead guitarist and a singer. The song touches on the adrenaline rush of the road as a metaphor for Hagar‘s passion for romantic love with a woman flows through him like the electricity for the bands guitars, amplifiers and show microphones.
Cabo Wabo is a homage to the easy vacation life in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The themes of love, sand, booze and romance among vacationers definitely has its appeal.
Source of Infection sticks with the aggressive tempo that initially feels out of place when comparing the intense feeling of love to infection. With the music sonically expressing the early lyrical confusion of recognizing precisely what one is feeling, the song offers getting swept away with a fever of infatuation.
Feels So Good answers the confusion of Source of Infection with an infectious certainty both musically and lyrically. The joy of new found optimism of landing love feels so good that the band reintroduces a good measure of harmonizing to boot. The outcome here is among the better ones on the album.
Finish What Ya Started offers the most sonically unique song on the album, with a sound that really hits the mark. The song focuses on unrequited physical passion, which in being suggested yet not satisfied leaves the receivers of the bad news in an unsatisfying way. The underlying riff is said to have come to Eddie Van Halen in the middle of the night, with Hagar adding lyrics to the music in a session that led to what we hear on OU812.
Black and Blue takes a cynical view of physical passion. The message is that when the interest in mutual physical passion has arrived, act on that passion to the extreme of pain. The message is cynical in vacating hope for a longer lasting relationship, the mood for continued passion in the moment, or a number of other factors that give me pause while looking back with the distance and experience of 35-years since this album was released.
Sucker In a 3 Piece offers an almost angry sounding opening riff, which emphasizes the message about to land. As noted here, this “song is about a guy who gets dumped by his very attractive girlfriend because she is looking for a rich man to take care of her (the “sucker in the three-piece suit”). This sugar daddy is fat and bald, but he’s got the cash she’s after.” The lyric “nine on a ten scale” within this song is a subtle reference to Sammy Hagar‘s 1976 album Nine on a Ten Scale.
A Apolitical Blues was not included with cassette or vinyl pressings of OU812. With composition credit belonging to Lowell George rather than the Van Halen bandmates, this song remakes the blues ditty released by Little Feat in 1972.
Matt – Saturday, May 20, 2023
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