About Right Now

"Right Now" is a song written by the group Van Halen for their album For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. The song reflects on living for the moment and not being afraid of making a change. According to Eddie, the instrumental dates back to 1983, "before I wrote "Jump" – it didn't come out until about '92, '93 or something like that, cause nobody wanted anything to do with it." An early version of the melody appears in the 1984 movie The Wild Life which was scored by Eddie. Eddie also stated that before Hagar was hired to replace David Lee Roth, he considered an album that would feature various guest singers, with Joe Cocker assigned to "Right Now".

Vocalist Sammy Hagar has said that he was writing the lyrics to this song at the studio very late one night, and he heard Eddie Van Halen in an adjacent room working on a piano melody. Hagar said he suddenly realized that "we were writing the same song," so he walked into the room and began singing his words over Eddie's music. Hagar says the lyrics for "Right Now" were the best he ever wrote for a Van Halen song. "I was tired of writing cheap sex songs," he recalled almost two decades later. "Eddie and I wanted to get serious and talk about world issues." Different edits of the video had been used in Van Halen's 2004 tour to make more explicitly political statements in later years.