1984 (stylized in Roman numerals as MCMLXXXIV) is the sixth studio album by American rock band Van Halen, released on January 9, 1984.
This is the final full-length album to feature all four original members (the Van Halen brothers Eddie and Alex, Roth, and Michael Anthony), although they reunited briefly in 2000 to start work on what would much later become 2012's A Different Kind of Truth.
It reached number two on the Billboard 200 and remained there for five weeks, kept off the top spot by Michael Jackson's Thriller, on which guitarist Eddie Van Halen made a guest performance.
Following the tour in support of their fourth studio album, Fair Warning, the band initially wanted to slow down and take a break.
[7] By 1983, Eddie was in the process of building his own studio, naming it 5150 after the California law code for the temporary, involuntary psychiatric commitment of individuals (who present a danger to themselves or others due to signs of mental illness), with Donn Landee, the band's longtime engineer (and later, producer on the 5150 and OU812 recordings).
[9][10] In Rolling Stone's retrospective review of 1984 in its '100 Best Albums of the Eighties' list, Templeman said, "It's real obvious to me [why 1984 won Van Halen a broader and larger audience].
Nahas had initially been asked to create a cover that featured four chrome women dancing, but declined due to the creative difficulties.
[24] The reason for this is that Ed's OB-Xa was having an issue staying in tune and while it was being repaired he was sent the newer model OB-8 (which was featured prominently on future Van Halen albums).
In a 1995 cover story in Rolling Stone, the guitarist said Roth had rejected the synth riff for "Jump" for at least two years before agreeing to write lyrics to it.
[26] In his memoir Crazy from the Heat, Roth confirms Eddie's account, admitting a preference for Van Halen's guitar work; however, he says he now enjoys the song.
[8][28][29] Later, a video of "Hot for Teacher" was released and played regularly on MTV, giving the band a fourth hit which sustained sales of the album.
Other songs on 1984 included "Girl Gone Bad", parts of which previously had been played during the 1982 tour amidst performances of "Somebody Get Me a Doctor" (including the US Festival show), the hard rock "Drop Dead Legs", and "Top Jimmy", a tribute to James Paul Koncek of the band Top Jimmy & The Rhythm Pigs.
The album concludes with "House of Pain", a heavy metal song that dates back to the band's early club days of the mid-1970s.
[30] Eddie Van Halen told an interviewer that "Girl Gone Bad" was written in a hotel room that he and then-wife Valerie Bertinelli had rented.
[31] 1984 peaked at number 2 on the Billboard 200 (behind Michael Jackson's Thriller, which featured an Eddie Van Halen guitar solo on "Beat It"), and remained in that spot for 5 consecutive weeks.
1984 is the second of two Van Halen albums to have achieved RIAA Diamond status, selling over ten million copies in the United States.
[34] The album's follow-up singles – the synth-driven "I'll Wait", and "Panama", each peaked at Billboard number 13 on the Pop charts, respectively, in March and June.
He explained that "Side one is pure 'up', and not only that, it sticks to the ears" and that "Van Halen's pop move avoids fluff because they're heavy, and schlock because they're built for speed, finally creating an all-purpose mise-en-scene for Brother Eddie's hair-raising, stomach-churning chops."
Although he mentioned "Jump" as having "suspended chords and a pedalpoint bass in a manner more suited to Asia", he went on to state that "Eddie Van Halen manages to expand his repertoire of hot licks, growls, screams and seemingly impossible runs to wilder frontiers than you could have imagined."
He praised it as "pop cock-rock" that spanned showy crescendos ("Girl Gone Bad"), "space age symphonics" ("1984"), "Baba O'Riley"-style electronics ("Jump"), drum solos comparable to Kenny Aronoff joining Motörhead ("Hot for Teacher"), "Betty Boop with her top down" ("Panama"), and "unrooted tributes to roots bands" ("Top Jimmy"), overall saying: "It was pure avant-garde vaudeville, it was pure Hollywood, it was a chorus line in bed with the chainsaw massacre.