Synopsis

A little girl opens the video by reciting a twisted version of the nursery rhyme "What Are Little Boys Made Of?" before Van Halen launch into a brightly lit performance. Elsewhere, a shy young woman arrives at a casting session marked "Van Halen Casting." While waiting, she peers through a hole in a dressing-room door at the more flamboyant applicants. One of them retaliates with a power drill, frightening the newcomer away. The video closes with a comic outtake, as the child flubs her line and the director calls for another take.

Factoids & Trivia

• Eddie Van Halen's signature power-drill performance is central to the video. The drill was a Makita cordless model painted in the red, black and white pattern associated with his Frankenstrat guitar.

• The drill sound on the recording was created at 5150 Studios while Eddie played guitar and a technician operated the tool. Eddie described the effect as sounding like an engine being kick-started.

• The casting-room setting turns the song's deliberately crude sexual imagery into a spoof of rock-video auditions, complete with a handmade "Van Halen Casting" sign.

• The video ends by breaking its own illusion: the young girl makes a mistake during the opening recitation, and the production resets for another take.

• "Poundcake" was the opening track on Van Halen's 1991 album *For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge*. The song reached No. 1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart.

• Van Halen performed "Poundcake" at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards, marking the Sammy Hagar-era lineup's first live performance on U.S. network television.