I’ve sat on this premise for months. I was asked to compare the songs “Jump” by Van Halen and “Jump” by Kriss Kross. The simplest of jobs. Months.

Months.

Is it because I’m dumb? Partially, sure, but everything is partially because of that. No, it’s because I find the topic important (told you I was dumb). And with important topics, I want to choose my words carefully.

This is important to me because these are the first CDs I’ve ever owned. I know a lot of people know their first CD, and it’s a crucial part of their life story, or at least a little detail they remember when the topic gets brought up at work or a bar. I don’t remember my first CD because it could be a bunch of stuff so I just count a handful of them as my first.

Technically my first CD was a C+C Music Factory single that came with a 12 pack of Coca Cola. It was one of those small 3″ CDs, which I didn’t understand because our family didn’t have a CD player at the time. I looked it up and it had the song “Let’s Get Funkee” on it. I never actually listened to it though. I’m hearing this song for the first time as I type this.

My first CD was also Kriss Kross’ Totally Krossed Out. I think my older sister bought it, but we actually owned a CD player at this point so I could hear it instead of imagining what it might sound like.

I’ll probably count Green Day’s Dookie too because I remember buying it, and then Van Halen’s 1984 because that was the first album I got (along with 12 others) from a Columbia House CD-through-the-mail club that I used my dog’s name to subscribe to.

So I probably have minimum 20 first CDs but they all hold a special place in my heart. They’re all my children, and like real children some have been forgotten.

But these two “Jump”s, Kriss Kross’ and Van Halen’s, are like half siblings that didn’t grow up together, but ended up being good friends and having tons in common. It may not feel like it right away, they’re separated by genre and about 10 years time, but they’re party songs.

The party song is a special breed. Not quite a novelty, but certainly not “serious”. It lives in no man’s land where it tends to miss out on the critical respect, but isn’t goofy enough to make the rotation for Dr. Demento. It was a risky endeavor making the party song in the 80s and 90s. The risk to reward ratio was stacked against you, but that didn’t stop MTV and radio from attemthing a “throw it at the wall and see what sticks” method. For every timeless banger like “This Is How We Do It” you see 30 to 40 “Cotton Eyed Joe”s in a lumpy pile under it.

At the time Kriss Kross was poised to be an all time group. This is of course from my perspective as an 8-year-old. The future was little kids wearing backwards baseball jerseys and you can just try and stop it, old man. Of course that didn’t end up being the case, and the novelty of Kriss Kross wore off for most of the public after the first record. I personally hadn’t listened to “Jump” in years before writing this, but after giving it a bunch of fresh plays, I can say with confidence that it is due for a revival. It’s fun as hell and the beat aged as a nice example of the time without being an embarrassing one.

Like a lot of things from the 90s, they were hugely popular, then almost instantaneously treated like an embarrassing fad, a gimmick we all fell for. We just didn’t know how to handle earnestly loving goofy shit back then and for that I’m sorry. Gen Z should adopt “Jump”. I want huge Kriss Kross shirts on 20-year-olds and vinyl reissues of Totally Krossed Out at Urban Outfitters. Someone Tik Tok this for me.

Van Halen’s “Jump” is a different kind of party song. Van Halen themselves were a different kind of party band. They’re sometimes lumped in with the lesser 80s horny rock bands, but they skew to the more juvenile horniness of Porky’s (a movie I haven’t seen, but understand is about schoolboys spying on nude women) rather than the sleezy adult burrito fucking of Mötley Crüe. Not that one is more innocent than the other, but one is definitely more silly (oddly, the burrito fucking is not the silly one). The Crüe wanted to fuck and Van Halen sang little sex metaphors about pencils and dixie cups.

Van Halen was the thinking man’s party band. I know that sounds insane, but you can’t make music that perfectly dumb if you’re actually dumb. Van Halen is the Homer Simpson of music. Yes, Homer is an idiot, but he could not be written by idiots. Real idiots are funny by accident, Homer is funny because a smart person wrote him dumb.

I don’t know what Van Halen’s “Jump” is about and it’s irrelevant to this article. The point is it’s a party song and one of the better ones around even if you think Van Halen sucks. Some riffs are just too good to suck, and the synth on “Jump” broke down barriers for a lot of 80s bros for whom rock meant guitars and only guitars. That’s important, that’s part of history.

So while Van Halen’s song doesn’t need the cultural reminder like Kriss Kross’ might, it’s good to look past its ubiquity and note its importance that might otherwise get glossed over.

And next time you’re DJing a party, play both of these songs, and if a friend complains, turn off the music and force them to read this article on the spot.

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