"Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love" is a song by American rock band Van Halen. It was released in September 1978 as the fourth US single from their 1978 debut album, Van Halen. This song is one of the few David Lee Roth-era songs that subsequent replacement Sammy Hagar was willing to sing in concert when he joined the band in the mid-1980s. Guitar World readers ranked Eddie Van Halen's guitar riff in the song as the fifth-best metal riff of all time.

Background and writing

When Eddie Van Halen wrote the song, he did not consider it good enough to show his bandmates until a year later. He said it was supposed to be a punk rock parody, "a stupid thing to us, just two chords. It didn't end up sounding punk, but that was the intention." The guitar solo was doubled in overdubs with an electric sitar.

Legacy

The song has been described as "[laying] down the style and sentiment of what would become 80s hair metal". It has also been called their "most heavy metal track". The opening riff was sampled in Apollo 440's 1997 song "Ain't Talkin' 'bout Dub". The Minutemen covered a stripped down version of the song during their live performances; they also recorded it several times.

Personnel