Sammy Hagar New Song ‘Encore, Thank You, Goodnight’ Release Date

The new song “Encore, Thank You, Goodnight” by Sammy Hagar was inspired by a dream in which he was reunited with his late bandmate Eddie Van Halen.

Sammy Hagar Song Release date

The music video for the new song was released on Sunday, April 27, only a few days before Hagar’s Best of All Worlds Las Vegas residency begins on April 30.

“About two months ago, I had this dream and Eddie came. We were in a room like this, [with] a bunch of people around. It was just like he’d been gone. It was not like he was passed, but he had just been out of my life and we hadn’t seen each other for a while,” Hagar explained at the time.

In 2022, Hagar spoke to Ultimate Classic Rock about the dream that inspired the new song about Van Halen, who passed away at age 65 in 2020 following a cancer diagnosis.

Van Halen showed him a guitar “lick” in his dream that he had last heard during the 2004 reunion tour, Hagar told the publication. “Like a slide guitar, he performed this harmonic thing and slid it up to a chord. With that lick, we wrote a song,” Hagar explained.

“My final bow to that part of my life” is how the musician described this song in a press release. “It’s just supposed to be a thank-you,” he continued,  “It’s not meant to be anything more than a thank-you — with love, with respect, and with one hell of a guitar solo. Joe brought in that big, emotional, guitar-driven energy that feels like Eddie’s spirit but is entirely of Joe’s creation.”

“With Michael Anthony’s thundering bass and stellar Van Halen-esque background vocals and Kenny Aronoff’s relentlessly powerful driving rhythms, the song really came together on all levels,” Hagar continued.