10 Perfect Rock Albums That Everyone Hated Making

As the '80s started to turn a corner, you couldn't imagine a better band in hard rock than Van Halen. Around the time that hair metal was first starting to rear its head across the Sunset Strip, Van Halen were already there laying the groundwork for everything, as David Lee Roth turned into the ultimate frontman that you couldn't turn away from. It may have seemed like a party, but there were no brakes on this musical train.

After being on a nonstop cycle of recording and touring, the band decided that they needed a bit of a break, knocking out a quick cover of the Roy Orbison classic Oh Pretty Woman before going off and doing their own thing. Once the label saw this little goof around song climbing up the charts, they started to get a little bit more antsy, telling the band that they needed to strike while the iron was hot and put together another album.

And while Diver Down is by no means a bad record, you can definitely hear that fatigue across every song, with half of the record being dominated by cover songs and the rest being padded out with leftovers from early album sessions and Eddie just messing around with instrumentals in the studio. It might not be at the same level as 1984 or anything, but it really speaks to the kind of band we were working with when their 'phoned in' album sounds this good.