This is tough for me. Van Halen I was the first hard rock album I ever bought, and I loved it. But the band kind of lost me after that. I bought every album, but nothing clicked. I always felt like I wanted to like them, but just couldn't find anything to latch onto, and I moved on to other bands like Ozzy, Def Leppard, Scorpions, and so on. 1984 was the first album after that to really hold my attention.
1984 is easy for some to overrate because of all of the hits, but those hits are all great, and the deep cuts are all good as well.
Yeah, exactly. And this far down the road from that album, I can't even remember the deep cuts. But the hits are enough for me to choose that album in this poll.
And continuing with my thoughts from the first paragraph, what really re-ignited my interest in the band was 5150. I felt that Sammy really took the band to another level. 5150 was perfect for me, because I felt the band really upped their songwriting game on all fronts. The rockers REALLY ROCKED, and the pop stuff really had substance to it. And Sammy could carry it all off without it sounding like a schtik. I say this not to go off topic and get into a Dave/Sammy debate, but merely to say that this is a difficult poll because, as much as I loved the first album as both a solid album in and of itself AND as my "gateway" into hard rock, the Roth era of the band REALLY lost me as a fan after that.