1984

There comes a time in the life of every rock band when someone discovers a synth in the corner of the studio and wonders what happens when they start randomly twiddling the knobs. In Van Halen’s case this gave us the worldwide monster hit Jump but it’s clear on this album where the rest of the band pushed back for more traditional rock songs about women’s legs and hot teachers. It’s no surprise that they broke up with ‘musical differences’ a year later.

The guy could surely play the guitar, they discovered a synthesizer can make some music, and they wrote a huge hit. The rest is very dated and overhyped hard rock with the worst of its tropes.