Don't Tell Me (What Love Can Do)

"Don't Tell Me (What Love Can Do)" is a song by American hard rock band Van Halen from their 1995 album Balance. It is one of four singles issued for the album, and was the only one to reach #1 on the Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart, where it stayed for three weeks.

"Don't Tell Me (What Love Can Do)"
Single by Van Halen
from the album Balance
Released	January 1995^[1]
Recorded	1994
Length	3:52 (single version) 4:46 (video version) 5:56 (album version)
Label	Warner Bros.
Songwriter(s)	Eddie Van Halen, Michael Anthony, Alex Van Halen, Sammy Hagar
Producer(s)	Bruce Fairbairn

Chuck Klosterman of Vulture.com ranked it the 67th-best Van Halen song, calling it "the best song off the worst Van Halen album that isn’t Van Halen III."^[2]

Theme and references

When I heard that Kurt Cobain had taken his own life, the first thing I thought of was I wish I were there and could have tried to save him. The original title for these lyrics were “I want to show you what love can do," but because it was such a dark horrible thing I just couldn’t shine a light on it. So I changed the final line to “Don’t tell me what love can do."

P.S. It was also the time of the breaking up of Van Halen, our last album and tour so it added a lot of emotion, negativity and pain in the original vocal performance which surfaced the second I started singing this song for the first time since 1995.

Sammy Hagar^[3]

The song's main theme is about the power of universal love. Sammy Hagar says in his autobiography that he wanted the song to be uplifting, for the chorus to be 'I wanna show you what love can do', but that his relationship with the Van Halen brothers was becoming strained and that they were very critical of the lyrical treatment, wanting something with more attitude.

In addition, the story about the death of Nirvana's frontman, Kurt Cobain, is also told in the song through the lyrics "Is it right to take the easy way" and ends with "I can't tell you what's right for you" with the bridge, repeated towards the end of the song, saying "I see the damage done, yeah/oh Lord, I heard the shotgun".^[4]

Music video

The music video for the song was shot in December 1994; it was completed on December 12.

The video tells of the young husband from the video of "Can't Stop Lovin' You" during his prison sentence. The scenes show him and his friend doing a store robbery, along with his arrest, sentence to prison, his time there, activities and his brawl with an Asian inmate which ends with a brutal wrestle by the prison authorities and inmates who are close friends of the Asian inmate. The young man is then comforted by a man who visits him and the last scene of the video shows that he's due to be released. Interspersed are victims who, along with neon signs, display the attacks they survived such as that of gunshot, drive-by shooting, sexual assault, knifing, and more while the band is shown playing the song.

References

1. Strong, Martin Charles (1995). The Great Rock Discography. p. 866. ISBN 9780862415419.
2. Klosterman, Chuck (October 6, 2020). "All 131 Van Halen Songs, Ranked From Worst to Best A look back at the band's formidable legacy". Vulture.com. Retrieved October 9, 2020.
3. Sammy Hagar. "Sammy Hagar & The Circle- "Don't Tell Me (What Love Can Do)" Van Halen (Circle @Home Sessions No. 9)". YouTube. Archived from the original on 2021-12-12.
4. Chilvers, C. J. (1 January 2001). The Van Halen Encyclopedia. iUniverse. ISBN 9780595166695. Retrieved 10 December 2016.