“Hot for Teacher” is one of Van Halen’s shittiest and most overrated songs.
Yes, you read that right. “Hot for Teacher” by Van Halen sucks.
I know, it’s basically musical sacrilege to criticize Van Halen and not worship them and everything they do as godlike. I don’t care, this song fucking sucks.
Before you break out the torches and pitchforks, I’m not attacking the band on this one. I’m not really into Van Halen all that much, and I find them to be kind of mid, but I don’t hate them either. Nobody can deny their impact on music, and I respect that Eddie Van Halen is considered one of the best guitarists in history. My beef here is specifically with the song.
“Hot for Teacher” is supposed to be about some school boys who want to bang their teacher. As a former MILF connoisseur (I’ve gotten to the age where most hot moms are now my age or younger, and any hot woman significantly older than me probably has grandkids), by all means I should love this song. But I just can’t.
The song rambles on and on and on. Granted, it’s not as bad as George Thorogood’s cover of “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer”, which is so long and drawn out that it should be classified as a crime against humanity. You’d think that it would be easy to write a badass rock song about a hot teacher with half-decent lyrics and at least a modicum of a story. Nobody’s expecting Homer’s Odyssey here, but “Hot for Teacher” has absolutely no substance whatsoever. The lyrics are boring and uninspired, even the guitar playing is just “meh” (especially for Van Halen), and the whole thing just feels bland and flavorless. It’s not even good enough to be called musical junk food.
Even an AC/DC song is better than this crap. AC/DC songs are repetitive as hell and lack substance, but they have so much energy behind them that you don’t care. You turn your brain off, you have a great time, and you even sing along. You know, because the songs actually have fucking lyrics. Most of the vocals in “Hot for Teacher” are the guys pretending they’re in school talking about the teacher. They’re not even singing or anything, it’s like a bunch of dudes got drunk and recorded themselves having a bullshit session. I don’t know if they thought they were being funny or clever or what, but it’s actually pretty fucking annoying to listen to. If I was stuck in a classroom with these idiots back in high school I’d have turned around and told them all to shut the fuck up. I get it, they’re supposed to be teenage delinquents perving on their teacher, but their constant talking completely ruins the song.
Maybe from a musician’s perspective, the song has some instrumental complexity that non-musicians like me are just too dumb to understand. Everyone praises the opening drum and the fast guitar playing, but I’m just not seeing it. It’s not that any of the playing is bad or anything. It’s just not good enough to warrant special attention over any other Van Halen song. Unless the playing is absolutely exceptional or what the artist is doing is obvious (the sax in “Baker Street” comes to mind), there’s no way I’m going to pick up on any instrumental subtleties in a song. I don’t have a degree in musical theory, to my uneducated ears a song sounds good, average, or bad. I think it’s safe to say that this applies to the average listener as well.
Like I said, I’m not putting down Van Halen. They were pioneers in hard rock, and they weren’t untalented in the least. But with the average playing and the annoying talking segments, “Hot for Teacher” isn’t them at anywhere near their best.
“Jump” is overrated too btw. Fight me.
