This track features one of the most famous guest solos in pop music history. Eddie Van Halen's electric guitar solo, recorded in a single take at Sunset Sound Recorders, lasts roughly twenty seconds but left an outsized impact on popular music. Playing at 138 bpm over a hard-driving rock arrangement, Van Halen brought his virtuosic technique into a pop context, unleashing rapid-fire tapping, aggressive tremolo bar dives, and fluid legato runs. Producer Quincy Jones recruited Van Halen specifically to add rock credibility to what was already shaping up to be a crossover hit, and the guitarist reportedly played the solo for free, not expecting the song to go anywhere. Van Halen actually rearranged the backing track's chord progression to better suit his solo, and the result became inseparable from the song's identity. The recording helped shatter genre boundaries between pop and rock, contributing to the album's unprecedented commercial success and cultural reach. The solo demonstrated that a brief, explosive instrumental break could define an entire song, and it remains one of the most recognizable guitar moments in recorded music, endlessly referenced and imitated across genres.
