How many number ones did Van Halen have?
There are some bands whose legacy seems to extend beyond the pretences of commercial success, and Van Halen was one of them.
That’s not to say that Van Halen didn’t have their share of commercial success; of course, they did. But the fact that their legacy stretches to every corner of what success actually means, from ingenious artistic expression and cultivating a loyal fanbase to actual quantifiable measurements, makes it all much harder to summarise.
That there’s always much more than meets the eye about Van Halen is precisely why they’re still very much relevant. There’s also a lot of context and lore to take in, like the fact that they’ve gone through more than one main singer and that each iteration came with its share of challenges and then some.
As with most bands that you find yourself wanting to unpack with determination, figuring out where to start with Van Halen and appreciating their music and story starts with observing the opinions of the musicians themselves. While Eddie Van Halen isn’t someone you might have called intentional, especially when it comes to the status of his own guitar prowess (he constantly shunned the idea that he was, in fact, a legend), he did once shine a light on where Van Halen were at their best.
And in doing so, he revealed that his biggest motivation came from whatever their fans felt at any given time. “To pick songs, I can only go by what the audience response is, like say ‘Runnin’ with the Devil’,” Van Halen told Spinner in 2009. “To the day I die, we’ll have to play that because that’s what people want to hear, and ‘Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love’, ‘Unchained’, and ‘Jump’. There’s all kinds of stuff.”
How many number ones did Van Halen have?
He also mentioned ‘Eruption’, ‘Spanish Fly’, ‘Girl Gone Bad’ and ‘Drop Dead Legs’ as those that sat firmly among his favourites. But personal favourites aside, how did any of these fare when it came to charting position? Across Van Halen’s catalogue, they only ever achieved one number one on the Billboard Hot 100, which was ‘Jump’. However, they did score 13 number one hits on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart, and are one of the few rock bands that sold more than 10 million copies across two studio albums in America.
This is an enormous achievement when you consider the fact that, when it comes to charting position, anything that’s not pop or mainstream has an incredibly hard time making any sort of impact. This isn’t reflective of the impact of the music, of course, as we’ve seen with how none of the culturally disruptive punk songs across the 1970s even managed to score a number one at all.
But with Van Halen, and particularly the success of songs like ‘Jump’, it shows that even at their most whimsical when it comes to playing into the zeitgeist, there’s a level of integrity there, too. And David Lee Roth might not have bought into the whole idea of ‘Jump’ to begin with, but it’s these easier-to-consume infectious energies that always provide gateways into the broader story of the band – the one actually worth paying attention to.
