The Van Halen song Sammy Hagar said most of the band regretted
As much as fans will stand by them regardless of what they put out, it’s fair to say that the late 1980s were a period where Van Halen certainly dropped off in terms of both popularity and critical appeal.
Following the departure of frontman David Lee Roth in 1985, the band recruited Sammy Hagar as his replacement, and considering the final album of the Roth era, 1984, was a critical and commercial success, they managed to get off to a decent start with their new vocalist when they released 5150 in 1986.
However, the positive momentum that the band had generated for themselves seemed to rapidly dwindle, and the decline in quality of their studio albums all began with every subsequent release as the band found themselves careering further away from the hard rock and heavy metal style that they’d made themselves known for.
Now attempting to incorporate more pop-adjacent elements into their sound, their second album with the new frontman, OU812, was a massive step down in quality despite its commercial success. There were seemingly fewer examples of the band demonstrating their virtuosic abilities on their instruments, and everything was being played much safer than before as they settled into this new incarnation.
1988’s OU812 and the rest of the work that the band produced over the next decade was watered down in many respects, even though some of the rock elements that made them so easily identifiable were still there.
However, the mood within the band and perception of the material they were working on at the time was seemingly mixed, and while Hagar admitted that he liked one particular song from OU812 that he felt was unfairly treated, the rest of the band seemed to regret ever writing the song, let alone releasing it.
Reflecting on the release of the album in 2010, Hagar claimed that one of the album tracks, ‘Feels So Good’, is actually one of his favourites from this period. “‘Feels So Good’ was a stepping out for us,” he told Martin Popoff. “Sort of a pop Genesis style. I like it a lot; nobody else in the band liked it, except for maybe Eddie.”
Given how the band have never performed the song in a live capacity, it’s evident that it was never popular within the group, and even though it was released as a single, it only managed to peak at number 35 on the Billboard Hot 100, signalling that the disappointment wasn’t just felt within the band, but also by their audience.
It’s definitely a much more pop-adjacent song than one might expect from a band like Van Halen, and a clearly calculated effort by the band to create something that felt modern, but it’s also a far cry from what they’ve always been capable of as a group, and fails to show off any of their flair to the same degree as their earlier work. It’s definitely not the worst song in the world, but you can understand why the band would have been less than keen on it representing this era of their work.
