HateSong - "Jump" by Van Halen

Let me first say that my hatred of "Jump" by Van Halen has little to do with the song itself. It's a wacky, if competent, ode to... something. This is Roth in total Life Coach mode, showing how awesome life can be if you just toss off some vague shackles and embrace your inner superhero. I used to hate David Lee Roth, viewing him as a goofy, show-boating wannabe superstar when tortured, angst ridden geniuses were more my thing. In the years since, I've come to accept and even enjoy his brand of showbiz lunacy, which has resulted in more than a few hilarious interviews. His music still doesn't really speak to me, though Eat 'Em & Smile, if the vocals were removed, would be a classic in complex, prog-tinged, algebraically dense math rock.

Instead, my issue is with Eddie Van Halen's guitar tone. It never much occurred to me why anyone would be a fanatic for a musician simply because of their virtuosity. The player can be highly skilled, but you still have to listen to their songs. With "Eruption", Van Halen managed to take a solo electric guitar piece and couch it in ways the Heavy Metal Parking Lot crowd could dig: his considerable skill is on display, but in a form that has the kind of melodic structure to keep the listener interested.

The problem is, trying to balance a virtuoso performance with the other elements of a full-band song does a disservice to both. The final result is truly a mix: if the vocals are all over the place, they reduce the rest of the instruments to a bland backing track; if the drums are front-and-center, it may as well not have any harmonic content. Van Halen tried to have it both ways, trying to cram a solo guitar part into a standard song. They did this by recording the guitars "hot", that is, the sound wave just grazes into the territory where it becomes a blurry, distorted mess. Its all peaks and no valleys; the frequencies normally mixed lower are raised up, eliminating their support roles and making every sound across the audio spectrum have the same level of importance. For a solo guitar track, this is fine, if a little exhausting to listen to. The audience gets a peek into every facet of the guitars tone (all at once!) and the guitar commands all of the attention.

The thing is, there are 3 other guys in Van Halen vying for space in the mix. Michael Anthony's bass was always workmanlike and rarely showy, but Alex Van Halen's drum kit included so many pieces that only a Guitar Center employee could identify them all. Not to mention David Lee Roth's vocals, which, as most humans, resides in the same neighborhood of the spectrum as a guitar.

In order to make the vocals fit, but without losing any definition in the guitar tone, the guitar track was fed through another series of compressors and equalizers to surgically remove it from the frequencies that Roth's vocals, which would be much more noticeably altered with a lot of processing. The result is a guitar tone that is somehow bright yet flat, like when someone overuses the Dust & Scratches tool in Photoshop and the result makes the person look like a mannequin. It's oppressive, a fuck-you to the idea of anyone wanting to hear anything other than a coked out rock star's guitar. When it comes on the radio, I immediately change the station.