Van Halen came late to the topic of love in the ’80s. After swapping out front men when the Lee Roth model proved no longer sustainable, their songs underwent a noticeable tonal shift. Although the Vans Halen themselves, along with any other unnamed remnants of the original band, surely remained firm in their conviction that jumping would always be a viable alternative, the public face of the band turned to more philosophical topics.
In 1985 they asked the question Why Can’t This Be Love?, and may or may not have come up with an answer by 1988’s (How do I know) When it’s Love. One can only presume they would eventually have gotten around to addressing the Who, What, and Where of love had these two early attempts proved, despite being massive hits, how ill-suited the reconstituted Van Hagar were to address such lofty questions.
Take, for example, the chorus of When It’s Love:
How do I know when it’s love?
I can’t tell you, but it lasts forever.
Although providing zero pertinent information on the topic of love, we do see demonstrated here a previously unspoken linguistic principle, that words directly following a question do not necessarily constitute an answer. It does not, however, demonstrate why Van Halen would have put themselves in a position to entertain this question in the first place, especially when they know very well they don’t have the answer. Do they simply want to be unhelpful? The next line would suggest that they might:
How does it feel when it’s love?
It’s just something you feel together.
Oh, okay. So if it’s love, it doesn’t end, and it feels like love. Great. That really sheds a lot of light.
The uselessness of these answers is almost enraging to me. If you, as Van Halen seems to be, are of the opinion that love is like a disruptive technology that can only be predicted in retrospect, maybe, when some poor lovelorn fool comes to you with a question you believe unanswerable, have the humility to answer honestly. “I can’t tell. You should probably ask someone else, because I cannot contribute to this conversation in a meaningful fashion at all,” is maybe a little wordy for a song lyric, but these are the same guys who titled an album For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge; they are not afraid to use a bunch of unnecessary words to get their message across. We have that in common, Van Halen and I.
When It’s Love, though, was at least Van Halen’s second attempt at addressing the fathomlessness of time. In the earlier Why Can’t This Be Love, they call attention to the following conundrum:
Only fools rush in and only time will tell
if we stand the test of time.
Again, it’s a universal dilemma that longevity can be achieved only through longevity and it can be difficult to commit to something that is unsure of success. But here, this is an interesting and not-at-all annoying observation because it’s not presented as any kind of answer.
The central dilemma, though, in Why Can’t This Be Love is not one of duration; it’s the titular question posed in the chorus:
It’s got what it takes
So tell me why can’t this be love
Is Van Halen making this more complex than it needs to be? Because it’s hard to know what they’re actually asking here. If the major component of it being love is that it has what it takes – to be love, given the context – then it would stand to reason that it actually can be love. Right? If we accept that the defining factor of love is that it lasts forever, and in this case it has what it takes to be love, then as long as it lasts it’s love; if it doesn’t last, then it wasn’t love and then the reason that it can’t be love is simple: because it’s not. It’s a little convoluted, which is maybe why Van Halen took a few years between albums to process it.
And I think that’s why, as frustrating as I find “When It’s Love,” Van Halen seems pretty satisfied to have worked that out. Not just in the case of Sammy Hagar’s lead vocals, which soar even before being joined in harmony by the brothers from Halen. But the music, too, is celebratory, with nameless drummer in the back crashing around to keep thing upbeat, while the guitars toward the end reach a crescendo the likes of which you might otherwise expect to accompany a burst of sunlight appearing after 40 days of rain or a sudden realization that hits when, for a moment, every single thing makes sense.
And that, if I were a song writer, is what I would propose is how you can tell if it’s love: that it makes you feel as though you’ve achieved a sense of realization and contentment, even though nothing tangible has changed. And that you can accept it for what it is at the moment, however long that moment might last.
Fun With Song Lyrics 