The top Van Halen songs are not easily arrived at.  The list you see to the left is my choice for the top 50 Van Halen Songs.  It's sequential so the top 10 is what I feel are the top 10 Van Halen songs, the top 20 is my top 20 of Van Halen songs.  It's impossible to stop there, and number 20 is hardly much better in my mind than number 30, or 40, or 50.

To begin with, the reason it's so difficult to narrow the list down is the brevity and the quality of Van Halen songs.  There are 151 songs on disc that have been released by Van Halen.  There are actually thousands of Van Halen tracks "out there," of which my iTunes has 1,030 as of June 24, 2011! 

The whole list of songs (following, below) of 151 released songs by VAN HALEN only, includes consideration of the live album, "Right Here, Right Now: LIVE" and it also includes 3 recent instrumentals by Edward Van Halen. 

Let's acknowledge what the criteria are for this list.  For my ultimate list of TOP VAN HALEN SONGS I am NOT considering those 25 Live Songs with Sammy Hagar from "RHRN Live", except for inclusion of "Won't Get Fooled Again" because they are otherwise not original versions, I am neither including side projects; to meet our criteria of the best Van Halen songs it must be strictly Van Halen or Van Halen with less than 4 members; we include all studio tracks, disregard the live versions, we include all studio instrumentals in the list of 151 but not for inclusion into the final list of the top 50 Van Halen songs because instrumentals belong on their own list, yet we defy our rules, even including 3 recent studio instrumentals by EVH, as they were made at 5150 studios although they do not appear (as of yet) on any Van Halen albums.   Plus it's about time for some new Van Halen, any existing had to be considered.

We arrive at our total of 151 released Van Halen songs from there being 62 Van Halen songs with David Lee Roth (including "Me Wise Magic" and "Can't Get This Stuff No More" from 1996); 74 Van Halen songs with Sammy Hagar  (we are including the extra Balance song,  "Crossing Over", and the three from 2004) ; 12 with Gary Cherone, and 3 recent Edward Van Halen solo tracks ("Catherine", "Rise" and "Joy To The World") which we include because they are recent, by Edward Van Halen, alone,  so it's fair to include them as Van Halen songs.  I left instrumentals out of the equation of inclusion as top Van Halen songs because they aren't comparable to vocalized, song-written material.  They stand alone, in their own realm of consideration so I will later rate the instrumentals. 

To begin arriving at the list, the total list of 151 released Van Halen songs, below, was constructed by listing them in individual order by album, first to last.  Then by labeling the songs that I felt were worthy of a rating of 10 out of 10, it's easy to identify the songs to be considered for the final list.  From that it was a matter of labeling them more descriptively, all those tens, as a rating between 95 and 100 out of 100 possible.  As much as I love every Van Halen album, in my list every song of Van Halen II fell just short of the high points that the rest of these songs achieve.  Van Halen I, Fair Warning, 1984, 5150 and Balance had the most 100/100 scores.  I could have easily told you those were my favorite five albums to listen to, before doing this, however by doing this analysis, scientifically labeling them, I can see exactly why I think what I think.  Keep in mind, this song list does NOT include "side projects", and the like, which are addressed below this list of Van Halen songs.