Sammy Hagar shared on X the Van Halen song that he finds difficult to sing.
“Singing this song was always difficult,” the singer wrote in his post, sharing a live performance of Van Halen’s 1995 track, ‘Don’t Tell Me What Love Can Do.’ “I wrote the lyrics about Kurt Cobain’s death.”
He went on to explain, “I wanted the chorus to say ‘I wanna tell you what love can do,’ but Bruce Fairbank, Ed, and Al wanted to make it more dark and negative. Technically it’s a brutal song to sing.”
“I painted myself in a corner, but we will be doing it at the residency in Vegas. I’m going to add it to the show. Today marks the 30th anniversary of ‘Don’t Tell Me What Love Can Do’!” Hagar added.
‘Don’t Tell Me (What Love Can Do)’ was part of Van Halen’s 1995 album ‘Balance,’ with Hagar, Eddie Van Halen, Michael Anthony, and Alex Van Halen as the songwriters.
In 2020, Sammy began the Lockdown Sessions video series on YouTube with his bandmates from The Circle—Michael Anthony, Vic Johnson, and Jason Bonham. They also performed ‘Don’t Tell Me (What Love Can Do)’ in August 2020.
In the video description, Hagar wrote, “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 was ‘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,” he added.
‘Don’t Tell Me (What Love Can Do)’ was one of four singles from the ‘Balance’ album and the only one to top the US Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart, where it remained for three weeks, according to Ultimate Classic Rock.
