Jump
by Van Halen
- 129
- BPM
- C major
- Key
- 8B
- Camelot
- 58
- Danceability
- 18
- Acousticness
Eddie Van Halen and engineer Donn Landee put down the track for Van Halen's "Jump" alone, in the middle of the night, at Eddie's newly built home studio. According to producer Ted Templeman, they recut it once in one take for sonic reasons. The keyboard part was played on an Oberheim OB-Xa. David Lee Roth wrote the lyrics that afternoon in the backseat of his Mercury convertible. The vocals were finished the same day, and the song was mixed that evening.
Eddie had written the synth line around 1981, but the rest of the band rejected it. In 1983, Templeman asked Roth to listen to the unused idea. Roth rode around in the back of his 1951 Mercury, with roadie Larry Hostler driving, and played the tune over and over. For a lyric, he remembered a TV news report from the night before about a suicidal jumper. He figured one of the onlookers would inevitably yell "go ahead and jump". Hostler agreed it was good, but the lyrics became an invitation to action, life, and love instead.
"Jump" was released in December 1983 as the lead single from the album 1984. It reached number 1 on the US Billboard Hot 100.
Jump runs at 129 BPM, the tempo of house, disco and most club dance music. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.86 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 465 ms. It is in C major, Camelot 8B, which shares its notes with A minor and mixes cleanly with F major and G major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.