Billboard #1 Hits: #545: ‘Jump’- Van Halen. February 25, 1984. #1 for 5 weeks in Billboard Hot 100.

• Single: ‘Jump’- Van Halen
• Record Company-Warner
• Genre: Rock
• Written by Michael Anthony/David Lee Roth/ Alex Van Halen/ Eddie Van Halen
• Time: 4:02
• B-side:’House Of Pain’
• Album-1984
• Grade: A+
• Peaked at #1 5 weeks in Billboard Hot 100. #7 in UK Singles Chart, #1 in Canada and Italy.

Van Halen’s biggest hit – and only #1. I can take or leave Van Halen- but I love this song. Eddie Van Halen would later tell Daryl Hall that he copied the snyth part from “Kiss On My List”-and used it in ‘Jump’- Hall said he had no issue with that. The song was a big departure from what Van Halen had done up to this time musically.

Diamond Dave wrote the lyrics to the song-

from songfacts-

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.