Hair metal/glam metal/poseur metal/whatever you call it has nearly always held the enmity of the majority of rock critics, and it and its fans are generally considered to be the Great Musical Laughingstock of the past 30 years.
Yet, to my ears, at least, there’s a hell of a lot of it that ain’t all that bad. First off, a surprising number of the players are quite accomplished on their chosen instrument; the vocals (leads and harmony) were pleasingly soaring a great deal of the time; and their ability to produce a catchy, pure pop tune is certainly nothing to be sneezed at.
So. What say we try to turn public sentiment around on one of the most reviled of recent musical genres (because, damn it, it’s mook rock that really deserves all the raspberries) by posting exemplary examples of the genre?
I’ll start us off with a little band called Tesla.
It alienated some less desirable idiots from the rest of society, and gave us people we could laugh at (years down the road - it wasn’t as funny at the time).
Ok, I’ll behave…
Um, trying to remember what I listened to back then that would be considered hair metal, that I’d have good things to say about now…
Are we just doing glam stuff (Motley Crue, Poison), or would bands like Quiet Riot and Twisted Sister be considered as well? Is Judas Priest a hair band? I’ve always considered hair bands the “glam rock” stuff, where the guys used tons of hairspray and makeup and looked prettier than most of their groupies.
I’m going to nominate Kiss. I don’t think anyone in the band was THAT talented musically, but they put together a ton of catchy songs, the costumes and imagery was pretty inspired and unique at the time - yes I know about the New York Dolls, but Gene and Paul took it bigger, better, and badder. Their shows were a visual experience like nothing else. The marketing Gene did back in the 70’s was brilliant. They formed their own company and slapped their logo and faces on anything they could sell. They combed elements of sci-fi, Japanese theater, halloween, comic books, and some great songs. They were pretty huge in the late 70’s, and tried to reinvent themselves constantly for a while (Music from the Elder, Dynasty). I haven’t heard much of their more recent stuff, but they have enough classics for 4 bands.
I’d say nearly all the bands you mentioned I would characterize as hair or glam or pop metal. Judas Priest, however, don’t really fall into any of those categories, IMO. I’d definitely consider them to be more NWOBHM (just as I would Iron Maiden or Saxon, say).
But KISS can definitely be included, if only for their jumping on the Aqua Net bandwagon during the eighties.
In the interest of decency and out of my innate love for humanity, I’ve reported this thread and asked for it to be closed.
You hit the nail on the head right after that last comma. That’s the heart of why hair metal isn’t respected, at least by most headbangers: it’s really just pop music turned up and affecting the styles of metal, without ever veering from strictly suburban male teen-centric lyrical content.
But why does a song like, say, “Modern Day Cowboy” deserve less respect than a song like, say, “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)”? When you get right down to it, they’re both catchy as hell. The only difference seems to be lyrical content, and one song’s “harder” and faster than the other.
I’d like to, but I keep flashing back to 1988, and these two new bands from L.A. who both showed up on MTV at the same time: Guns 'n Roses, and Jane’s Addiction. It was like there were two paths to be chosen from, both were dark and scary, but one had that glam thing going on, while the other was just more real somehow.
My feelings on the subject were best summed up in a little movie called The Wrestler:
Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson: Goddamn they don’t make em’ like they used to.
Cassidy: Fuckin’ 80’s man, best shit ever !
Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson: Bet’chr ass man, Guns N’ Roses! Rules.
Cassidy: Crue!
Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson: Yeah!
Cassidy: Def Lep!
Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson: Then that Cobain pussy had to come around & ruin it all.
Cassidy: Like theres something wrong with just wanting to have a good time?
Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson: I’ll tell you somethin’, I hate the fuckin’ 90’s.
Cassidy: Fuckin’ 90’s sucked.
Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson: Fuckin’ 90’s sucked.
**Bo **- that’s why I tend not to post in these threads; I don’t want to threadshit, or at least be perceived as threadshitting…
Look, hair metal, as a genre - as with most genres - is 95% crap, with a few credible entries. It is easy to sum up the crap with a few dismissive adjectives because the genre never aspired to much more than commercial success. I choose not to “make a case” for it - I don’t think the entire genre needs to be argued for as more worthy than common perception.
Hey MTC, I thought critical consensus was immutable fact, not open to individual perspectives? That if enough people hold a similar opinion, anyone who disagrees is “clearly” wrong? Please let me know when it’s OK to be a revisionist hipster and when it’s not. Thanks!
One thing that distinguishes hair metal from real metal for me is that the lyrical content of real metal seldom (if ever) talks about sex/love/chicks. Maiden, Priest, Mortorhead, Sabbath, Metallica, Megadeth,Slayer – not a single love song to be found among any of them.
Real metal also tends to be far more concerned with musicianship and complexity of composition than with image and pretty boy preening. Bands like Poison are musically very simple, bordering on childish. 1-4-5 progressions using open chords down at the nut (see “Every Rose…”) or simple, unchallenging, three or four chord power chord progressions. The instrumentals in hair metal are just bland backups for the douchebag singer to croon middle-school level poetry at teenage girls.
Real metal, at it’s best, is similar to jazz in that it’s actually focused on fleshing out and exploring advanced musical ideas. There’s a lot more experimentation with complex or changing time signatures, explorations of challenging harmonies, of dissonance, of dynamic variation and so forth. I guess what I’m saying is that real metal musicians can actually play their instruments while hair metal douches can barely play and just use them for props.
I guess this isn’t sounding like much of a defense for hair metal. The best I can say is that they occasionally produced a catchy hook – CC Deville had a knack for writing catchy little bubble gum riffs – but essentially it was a shallow genre intended for casual fans. They were to metal what Kenny G is to jazz, or what Michael Bolton was to the blue – basically costumed pop.
The problem for me is that all those bands were so miscegenistically inbred and mutually derivative that they eventually formed this kind of generic–and boring–noise.
I pride myself on being pretty genre-blind in my music appreciation. There really isn’t a genre in which I can’t find SOMETHING to like. But 80s-style metal comes pretty close. I like Priest, and of course some of the genre’s precursors and fringe elements, like early Queen, but try as I might, I can’t find a way into 99% of it. And yes I tried: as I’ve said I worked in a record store in the 80s. And I had a huge, heartbreaking crush on a guy I worked with, who was a hairmetal god. The greatest hair in the world–this coulda been him on a bad day–and played in 2 bands, one of which was pretty well known in its time and place. HUGE crush. And we shared a love of Kate Bush. So I tried really, really hard to like his kind of music, because then, you know, maybe he’d sleep with me, right? I listened to everything he gave me. I pretended I liked it when I listened to it. I appreciated the technical skill of the musicians. I listened when he demonstrated with his own guitar why Yngwe Malmsteen was a god. But the more I listened to it, the more it just got boring.
Now obviously there have been people I respect who like the stuff, but this is one critical consensus you’ll find me backing the majority.
I guess for me it’s that I get the impression that there are all these obviously skilled musicians who put all their creative energy, work really really hard, in an attempt to stay rigidly within a narrowly formed genre. Their goal seems to be to sound, overall, alike. Sure a lick here, a riff there, but only the occasional isolated detail shows any originality or individuality. Otherwise, it’s an insular musical clique. You’re not accepted within it if you stray too far from it. Of course there’s a true scotsman element to this view, but I think that element is self imposed by adherents to the genre. It is, ultimately, one of the most conservative genres in all of music.
