Album reviewFor younger listeners who may have trouble remembering that Sammy Hagar and Guy Fieri are two different people, the clunky food-as-sex metaphors of "Good Enough" won't do much to help unwind their confusion. That song—blown open with Sammy Hagar's bellowing, try-hard "Hellooooo, baaay-byyy"—was a generation's introduction to Van Halen, Mark II, and it was an instant line in the sand. On paper, 5150 hit all the notes of a "classic" Van Halen album, with brain-melting guitar lines, bombastic drum lines, hard-rock harmonies, and a show-off lead singer belting out lyrics that were kinda dumb and kinda naughty, but meant to inspire a good time. The thing was, the blueprint was different than the final build, and not only did Hagar bring his own signature moves (half-dork, half-corporate rocker), but the Van Halen brothers had also significantly altered their instrumental approaches in the two years since 1984 to be busier and more sharply defined, aided along by a decidedly more crystalline production approach. They even changed the Van Halen logo! Thus, 5150 was—both metaphorically and probably literally—a fine-tuned Lamborghini compared to the Roth era's hot-rodded street racer, resulting in a high-gloss, high-performance effort that yielded multiple hits ("Dreams," "Why Can't This Be Love," "Best of Both Worlds") and was double-platinum two months after its release.
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