Sure. I think of hair metal as just power pop with a harder edge (and sometimes that edge isn’t that much harder, at all). In fact, some of those Poison records sound like they could have just as well been made by Cheap Trick.
Hair metal was just fun pop music with great hooks and melodies. It’s rather silly to compare it to more serious forms of metal as hair metal has a completely different set of genre expectations and objectives. It’s just supposed to be (mostly) party music that doesn’t take itself too seriously. And sometimes, as a listener, that’s all I want.
I didn’t much listen to metal of any form in the 80s, but looking back at the genre (mostly through games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band), I’ve come to the conclusion that the genre is undeservedly derided. There were a lot of pop songwriting gems in there, like “Talk Dirty to Me,” “Shout at the Devil,” “Round and Round,” etc.
I don’t think that’s true at all. . It’s true of the recording industry that they want pop bands to stay comfortable and predictable, but the serious metal musicians I knew (and I was one of them) tended to be highly eclectic and experimental. Sounding unique was the goal.
There were some bands/musicians who were happy to just sound generic, but, in my experience, they weren’t all that serious about the music to begin with. The bands were just something they did for fun or to try to get chicks.
edit: OK, I’m assuming you were being tongue-in-cheek there. Anyhow, Poison was one of those bands I hated in elementary school. I’ve done a critical re-evaluation of them and now I think they’re a lot better than I initially gave them credit for.
Understand that during the late 80’s record companies were signing ANYONE that simply “looked the part,” then had their producers simply plug them into the formula: one “rocker,” followed immediately with a power ballad-- sell a million records to screaming teenage girls and long-haired poser dudes. Hence the Trixters, Ugly Kid Joes, and Slaughters, and those were some of the ones who “made it,” as opposed to the more obscure (and even more terrible) ones like Tuff, Diamond Rexx, or Hericane Alice, among countless others.
**puly **- I’m with **Bo **here, I think. You’re not dissing Cheap Trick, are you? I love their core tracks - they aren’t part of the 80’s hair metal conversation, but worthy of tradition-of-Big-Star respect, IMHO. I normally think of our tastes as heavily overlapped, so I thought I would check in…
…back to your regularly scheduled thread. If “Is Cheap Trick worthy”? is a worthy enough topic, it can be moved to a different thread…
Hell, Talk Dirty To Me could (musically) be a near note-for-note ripoff of She’s Tight. And as a bonus, Faster Pussycat just about did a line-by-line cribbing of the first verse to write Bathroom Wall (Note: lest anyone think I’m slagging anything here, ripping off is simply part of the game – I fricking love every one of those tunes).
The thing about hair metal was that it wasn’t really about the music. Sure, that had it’s part, but it was more about the look, the moves, the attitude. Of course C.C. DeVille wrote simplistic riffs – more technically challenging riffs would’ve gotten in the way of the spin-kicks, somersaults and duck-walks.
For me, the hair metal scene will always be about the soundtrack of an important part of my life. That scene blew up right around the time I started hanging out on the Seaside Heights strip and going to clubs and bars – it was a happening. The actual music was secondary – the attitude was the important thing. It was all about sex, partying, sex, stirring up shit, and sex. And it was fricking awesome.
You want case for hair metal as a flat-out music genre? Can’t really help you there. The scene definitely put out a few legitimate artists who the chops behind the hairspray, but they definitely were the exception. The fluff-over-substance crowd was what ruled – and that was fine with me.
That is a rather silly point as the vast majority of music fits into a rigidly defined style. The fact is that metal had way more variation and originality than the rest of popular music genres at the time. In the 80’s, metals glory years, you had bands like Guns ‘N’ Roses touring with Metallica. Warrant to Slayer. There is a huge difference and if you cannot hear it, well that isn’t the musicians fault.
Heck no! I was comparing Poison with one of the most respected power pop bands: Cheap Trick. Who doesn’t like Cheap Trick?
Since it seems my statement has caused confusion, this is how the sentence
is meant to be parsed:
In fact, some of those “shitty” hair metal records actually are not at all that shitty and could have just as well been composed and performed by a very respected power pop band.
What you just said right there could be used (and often is used) to describe the metal genre as a whole, and not just the much-maligned hair metal offshoot.
“Round and Round” is the song I always think of when this topic comes up. I’ve never been a Ratt fan, but the song is a fine pop song dressed up in 80’s metal. You could dress the song up in any pop-oriented genre (modern country, 50’s r&r, etc.) and it would do fine. Writing a catchy song is not easy and the ones that succeed deserve some acknowledgement.
Exactly. Once we get old enough to forget all of the trash (and there was plenty), then the sub-genre will be reflected upon like any other pop genre.
And I’m not so sure that it’s the most conservative genre in that regard. Bluegrass and swing, as examples, are pretty damned rigid in their own right. But that’s a topic for another thread, I suppose.
You might have had to hunt around a bit, but there really were some solid guitarists in the genre – Warren DiMartini (Ratt) and Reb Beach (Winger) are two examples.
Actually, I think part of the problem the genre has it that this was really the first music made by people who had grown up with guitar heroes.
Hair metal doesn’t lack competent guitarists at all, but because of the era they came of age in, and the place (SoCal for many), there was a big focus on wanking with a guitar (or appearing to). The whole scene was so heavily about being seen, and about doing the things they thought their guitar heroes also did. For a lot of these guys, the music was just there for stuarting.