Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love
by Van Halen
- 68
- BPM
- Ab minor
- Key
- 1A
- Camelot
- 52
- Danceability
- 3
- Acousticness
When Sammy Hagar joined Van Halen in the mid-1980s, "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" was one of the few David Lee Roth-era songs he was willing to sing in concert. The song had come out in September 1978 as the fourth US single from the band's debut album. Roth did not think his lyrics were good enough to show the band for a year. He said it was meant as a punk rock parody, two chords and "a stupid thing to us", though it did not end up sounding punk. The guitar solo was doubled in overdubs with an electric sitar.
Others picked it up over the years. The Minutemen's 1984 album Double Nickels on the Dime has a 40-second version with only the instrumental theme, the third verse and the chorus. Apollo 440 sampled the opening riff in 1997 for "Ain't Talkin' 'bout Dub". Readers of Guitar World ranked Eddie Van Halen's riff the fifth best of all time. The song is the one linked with the Philadelphia Flyers.
Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love runs at 68 BPM, the tempo of slow ballads, ambient and downtempo. In classical terms it sits in largo territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 3.53 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 882 ms. It is in Ab minor, Camelot 1A, which shares its notes with B major and mixes cleanly with C# minor and Eb minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.