THE #1 SONG 30 YEARS AGO TODAY WAS....

.......Jump by Van Halen. Up until the the release of Van Halen's album 1984, the group had been a straight forward hard-rock band. All guitar and swagger, but no pop elements to their music necessarily. 1984 would see a huge change for the Van Halen's sound and for their success on the charts. Adding a lot of synth, Eddie Van Halen other passion besides the guitar, 1984 came out of the gate hard with the band's first and only #1 single ever, Jump. Jump is probably Van Halen's most recognizable song and certainly one of their most beloved. The song and the album, although their most successful up to that point, also lead to the eventual break up of Van Halen with their lead singer David Lee Roth, who thought the more synth-driven direction of the band was the wrong call. Regardless, Jump hit #1 on the Hot 100 February 25, 1984 and stayed atop the list for five weeks. The album went on to produce three more Hot 100 hits with I'll Wait (#13), Panama (#13) and Hot For Teacher (#56) and the band later replaced Roth with Sammy Hagar and had many years' worth of chart hits thereafter. David Lee Roth went solo and, sticking to his heavy-metal guns, covered the hard rock classic California Girls by the Beach Boys to much success. See what I did there? Jump, though, is still their crowning glory and one helluva pop-rock anthem. So here is the #1 song 30 years ago today. Enjoy and -- if you remember it -- feel old.
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