Van Halen

Best Of Volume 1

It's Fine, But It Comes Off as Too Skimpy

Review Score:

(8/10)
Van Halen was originally thinking of making their first greatest hits collection a double-disc set. This would have been a very nice treasure to have, as the group had delivered a steady set of goods since their infamous 1978 debut. But instead, they decided to trim it down to the single-disc THE BEST OF VAN HALEN, VOL. 1. Now, this process still wouldn't have been much of a problem, for Van Halen was always at their best for hits, and having the cream of the crop on one disc would have still resulted in a dynamite collection. Unfortunately, that is not necessarily the case with this setup.

First off, the disc does run through most of the group's heavy hitters, such as "Runnin' With the Devil"; "Ain't Talkin' About Love"; "And the Cradle Will Rock"; "Jump"; "Panama"; "Why Can't This Be Love"; "When It's Love"; and "Right Now." But it's the last three tracks where the collection stumbles. "Humans Being" may have been a hit on the charts, but yet it is such a bad and forgettable single, it didn't deserve to be placed here. The other two tracks, "Can't Get This Stuff No More" and "Me Wise Magic," are the new songs featuring original front man David Lee Roth; the band does sound fine, but the songs never rise to the level of memorable. This decidedly bad finish to a promising collection may have been forgivable if the collection had all of the essential tracks, and truthfully, without the last three songs, this still would have sounded pretty good. Instead, those three songs only emphasize on what's missing, which is quite a bit: from Dave, "You Really Got Me," "Jamie's Cryin'," "Beautiful Girls," "(Oh) Pretty Woman," "Dancing in the Street," "I'll Wait," and "Hot for Teacher" are all missing in action; from Sammy, the missing songs include "Love Walks In," "Black and Blue," "Finish What Ya Started," "Feels So Good," and "Top of the World."

But, again, despite those missing tracks, THE BEST OF VAN HALEN, VOL. 1 still works as an effective sampler because the first fourteen tracks still showcase Van Halen's best and biggest work. Yet it is still far from the collection it could have been.

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