Here’s an album that would have been a better fit last week, in that I’m very familiar with the hit singles but less so with the rest of the album. I couldn’t find room for it there, but I certainly wasn’t going to exclude an album that is named after the year I’m covering.

Van Halen’s 1984 was the hard rockers’ sixth album, and remains tied with their self-titled debut as their top seller. Powered by hit singles ‘Jump,’ ‘Panama,’ and ‘Hot For Teacher,’ the record sold more than 10 million copies in the U.S. and spent five weeks at #2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, kept from the top spot by Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

That was a good time to be Eddie Van Halen, who played a prominent role on Jackson’s ‘Beat It.’

Eddie was also the primary architect of 1984‘s sound, introducing synths against lead singer David Lee Roth’s wishes. The resulting album is a mix of the guitar-heavy hard rock for which the band was known and the glossier sound most evident on lead single ‘Jump.’

I know the three hits quite well, but I wasn’t familiar with the album’s fourth single (actually, the second one released), ‘I’ll Wait.’ The song was co-written by Michael McDonald, who was recruited by the album’s producer, Ted Templeman, a longtime collaborator of The Doobie Brothers.

1984 runs for just nine songs and a little more than 30 minutes. It’s tight and raucous, with songs about little more than the adolescent sex drive. In other words, a true work of art.