Jump - Armin van Buuren Remix

David Lee Roth has given various accounts of the meaning behind the lyrics, but he usually says they are about a TV news story he saw where a man was about to kill himself by jumping off a building (Roth thought, "Might as well jump"). He's also said the song is about a stripper. Roth is a great storyteller who likes to build his legend, so he would often add that he wrote the lyric while cruising around Los Angeles in his vintage 1951 Mercury convertible.

"Jump" leaped to #1 in America on February 25, 1984, and stayed for five weeks. Only "Like A Virgin" and "When Doves Cry" had longer runs at the top that year.

Unusually for Van Halen, the lead instrument on "Jump" is a synthesizer, an Oberheim OB-Xa played by Eddie Van Halen. This was on trend for the time as rock legends were finding ways to integrate synths into their sounds, vaulting them up the pop charts. Yes did it with their #1 hit "Owner Of A Lonely Heart" and ZZ Top with their Eliminator album. The synthesizer was a point of contention in the band. Eddie wanted to use it, but lead singer David Lee Roth thought it would look like they were selling out to get more radio play. Eddie was classically trained on piano growing up - he didn't start playing guitar until he was a teenager - so it wasn't that far a stretch for him. Had the band brought in an outside keyboard player they probably would have gotten a lot of flak, but Eddie was held in such high esteem that fans were happy to hear him on another instrument.