Women and Children First

Certain Songs #1935: Van Halen – “In A Simple Rhyme”

October 15, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Women and Children First
Year: 1980

. . .

One of the reasons that Women and Children First is my favorite Van Halen album is that it was a complete mish-mosh of styles. You never knew what you were gonna get next. And so after the opening salvo of “And The Cradle Will Rock…” and “Everybody Wants Some!” they did big electric blues, punky metal, metallic punk and acoustic folk, in an order that seemed like it was chosen via dartboard.

And indeed, that was kinda reflected on the original back cover of the LP, which had a completely different tracklisting than ended up on the album, showing just how much they didn’t give a shit how you heard the album, as long as you heard it.

Certain Songs #1934: Van Halen – “Everybody Wants Some!”

October 14, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Women and Children First
Year: 1980

In was 1985, and I was seeing a matinee (probably ditching class) of Better Off Dead, a teen comedy starring John Cusak as a guy who was suicidal after a breakup, and who kept failing to kill himself in a variety of funny ways, the impetus for a film that was an hour of dark comic genius followed by a half-hour of Hollywood ending. (And spawned the “I WANT MY TWO DOLLARS” meme that probably nobody remembered until I just now reminded them of it.)

There were two things I remember from that actual showing: 1) that the audience laughed hardest a a joke that had been in the trailer (“Now that’s a real shame when folks be throwing away a perfectly good white boy like that.”) and 2) the sequence involving Cusak’s character imagining a claymation hamburger playing an Eddie Van Halen guitar to what is Van Halen’s horniest, thirstiest song, “Everybody Wants Some!”

It was silly as fuck, of course, but it reminded me in the deepest part of my lizard brain that even while I was at my alt-rockiest, I just love this dumb-ass song. And I’ve never stopped.

Certain Songs #1933: Van Halen – “And The Cradle Will Rock…”

October 13, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Women and Children First
Year: 1980

. . .

Welcome to my favorite Van Halen album.

Yeah, I know that their debut changed everything, and 1984 contains some of their most beloved songs, but for me, Women and Children First — the album where they pretty much eschewed the pop influences that dominated the first two records and started completely fucking with their song structures — that’s the one I love the most.