I know hair metal's status as a subgenre of metal (or even a subgenre of music or just a fashion statement) is often debated, as with what bands should be given this label, but I'd rather put that aside and discuss how you guys feel about the scene and the music that is given this label

Glam metal was often picked on by metalheads during the 80s and 90s before the nu metal/metalcore wave came along, and even then I still see some rag on it at times. I found this cringy TheTopTens list here: (https://www.thetoptens.com/metal/reason ... -subgenre/), and let me just say I'm really glad I left this site a long time ago. Like, blaming them for the spawn of core? Blame Pantera (I know they ironically started off as a hair band, but I'm talking about Groovetera). I know "hair metal" is often used as a pejorative, but I actually prefer that term because it sounds better and helps differentiate from 70s glam rock which was kind of a different thing.

Musically speaking I don't have any strong opinions, but I do enjoy some tracks like You Give Love a Bad Name, Too Young To Fall in Love, and Europe the band in general; I also like some other 80s arena rock bands like Magnum. I feel that hair metal made a bigger mark in music history than thought. There were individual artists like Eddie Van Halen, but I think it helped inspire the more fun side of rock and metal music, particularly power metal, as well as the fashion of Visual Kei. It also helped curved the way for grunge and thrash as countermovements, which I count as influences, though you could argue otherwise?

So what are your thoughts? What do you feel about hair metal?

It was my gateway to metal in the early 80s via Motley Crue, Ratt, Twisted Sister, and Def Leppard.

I still enjoy these bands and the genre to this day and say that with no reason to feel embarrassment.
Frankly, it was not uncommon in the 80s to be a fan of Venom, Slayer & Kreator AND Ratt & Motley Crue. At least it was common where I grew up.

Anyway, the obligatory power ballads were more often, than not, terrible and simultaneously lead to the subgrenre's rise and its fall.

Bands such as Dokken, Europe (outside of that appalling hit), Winger, White Lion, etc., remain in heavy rotation for me...love 'em all.

I think its fine. When I was younger and worried about being thrown off Thrash Island I wouldn't admit to liking a lot of it. But I got older and stopped caring about such trivial nonsense and began to revisit some of that. Twisted Sister, Ratt, Motley Crue, Cinderella, Warrant, Skid Row, Dokken, Def Leppard, and a lot of other bands lumped into that scene right or wrong, made some great music.

Though some of those bands made albums that I'd call just heavy metal, not glam metal or hair metal.

first, i'll just say i probably listen to hair metal more than anything else these days. its what i was raised on and recently ive been doing some deep dives. bands who recorded albums in '92 that never got released type stuff. i will say that it's kind of silly to try to treat it like a metal genre in the way you would say, thrash or doom. it isn't really that. the genre had high-gain, crunchy guitars and the mainstream didn't know what else to call it. there is a little academic curiosity in examining a lot of the mid-80s bands who transitioned out of heavy metal into more glam sounds; bands like Victory, ICON, or honestly even Motley Crue, who definitely had a legitimate metallic sound to their first two records. ICON especially had an interesting pick-and-mix of heavy and glam metal on their first album.

but by the late 80s, the metal had generally been stripped out of the genre. i dont really know you could seriously argue that Poison's "Unskinny Bop" or Danger Danger's "Bang Bang" are metal at all, really. nothing wrong with that, of course! there were still a few exceptions, like Wildside's Under the Influence, Dokken's Back for the Attack, or a chunk of Firehouse's S/T, which have just enough aggression still to make a serious case, but in general the genre had taken a softer turn, and many bands, like Cinderella, were moving towards a more blues-influenced sound.

its interesting to look back on its influence on music. i dont really think you can say it influenced the direction of metal past like '93, really. there was, of course, the Nirvana bomb that shifted all mainstream attention away from the genre, but Pantera also set the direction for metal in the 90s more than anyone else. these days, the glam influence is almost totally excised from mainstream rock, and the bands that DO still have that sound in their DNA have taken a much darker, more cynical interpretation of the sound than what existed in the 80s. even the older bands seem a bit directionless regarding the genre. that may also play a big part in the genre's shift into a nostalgia circuit. the 80s thrash bands managed to find a way to freshen the sound up for modern sensibilities, but hair bands haven't been able to. again, there are some exceptions, like Motley Crue's Saints of Los Angeles, or newer bands like Wig Wam.

what is funny is how the division between heavy/thrash and glam that was heavily enforced in the 80s has all but disappeared, and for many people, its all in the same bucket of "80s metal". even among the musicians who did a lot to stoke that animosity, it doesn't exist anymore. i guess when Nirvana kills all of your careers overnight, you realize stupid feuds like that dont really matter.

It's fine. Sometimes it can get cringey but the same goes for any subgenre of extreme metal.

At least with hair metal you could say they were having fun, not sure about the latter.

Glam is one of those genres that doesn’t have a lot of stone cold classics but I can usually enjoy it on a base level for the focus on catchiness. My favorites, presumably like most folks on here, tend to be the ones that skew toward more overt heavy metal like Dokken, WASP, Def Leppard, and Twisted Sister but there’s stuff I like from Skid Row, Great White, Cinderella, and Alice Cooper’s albums of the era.

A huge amount of the bluesy stuff that often gets lumped into the 'hair metal' designation is fantastic.

Great White
Badlands (one of my all-time fav bands)
Tora Tora
Tesla (not really bluesy...perhaps "rootsy" is more ap)
Salty Dog
Blue Murder

All fantastic bands.

Tesla's got a hella bluesy song, I think it was on Mechanical Resonance, that was really cool. Really surprised me it came from a band mostly associated with hair metal.

If you ask me, Tesla's 80s material wasn't even attempting to be metal, hair or otherwise. I bet the only reason why they were lumped in with ANY metal movement (but especially hair metal) is ironically because of Love Song.

I enjoy some of it for sure. I grew up listening to the likes of Motley Crüe and Whitesnake's 'Slip of the Tongue'. I got into Cinderella a couple of years back, and remember never hearing them before. Oh course some of this music is yucky sugary, but there are golden moments. Alice Cooper wasn't yucky on fantastic 'Raise Your Fist and Yell' (my first touch with AC) but a couple of next ones were more glam-esque at times. But I did not mind, really.

One band I never see mentioned much/enough is Lillian Axe. Fantastic albums, pretty much. I need to investigate Badlands next!

agreed! Tesla is only considered hair metal because they were a hard rock band in the late 80s, which meant you got lumped in with that movement. I can't imagine any hair band doing a song like "Edison's Medicine". lyrics about Nikola Tesla? swapping between 3/4 and 4/4 in the prechorus? a theremin solo? no way man.

Love it, one of my favorite genres ever. I've always considered it a valid metal subgenre, lots of great stuff and cool riffs.

Tesla is a essentially a 70s hard rock band who happened to hit the scene in the mid 80s.

Hair metal rules. Tons of serious shredders on guitar in almost every band. I couldn't stand the ones that were happy/poppy but the ones that bordered playing heavy metal/hard rock were great.

A few bands that have some good material are Britny Fox, Dokken, Twisted Sister, Cinderella, Whitesnake, Dangerous Toys, early Def Leppard, Europe, Fastway, Killer Dwarfs, Pretty Boy Floyd, etc.

Hair metal and specifically 80's hair metal will always rule.

Being a dumb brainwashed Metallica teenager, I was programmed to hate it, except for Motley Crue. That was the one hair band "cool" to like (which is weird because that was the band Lars shit talked the most).

These days, I have more respect for it and it's musicians, particularly since Metallica ended up being bigger sissies than the hair metal bands ever were. I have some guilty pleasures like Britny Fox's "Girlschool" and Cinderella's "Nobodys Fool" (not for nothing, Tom sounds like Last In Line Dio on that song at times). I don't call myself it's biggest supporter or anything, but it has its good (Whitesnake, KISS, Guns N Roses) and its shite (Poison, Nelson) like every other sub-genre.




Good lord that is wack.

I enjoy it but never really did a deep dive into the genre. I've a few best of collections from a couple of different bands, and some Crue and Bon Jovi albums, that's about all I feel I need

By far my favorite band of this genre is Guns 'N' Roses, Iam surprised no one mentioned them since they are one of the biggest bands of that genre. Behind them the ones I like the most are Van Halen, Motley Crue, WASP and Skid Row. I like the grittier and more rock 'n' roll sound of those bands, they are pretty heavy in their own way.

Whitesnake is pretty corny, but you have to give David Coverdale some credit, he is an amazing frontman and a great singer, he sang in Deep Purple too, so he has true metal and rock 'n' roll legend credentials. Whitesnake also have an incredible roster of musicians in their line ups, guys like John Sykes, Cozy Powell and Steve Vai are hard rock/metal legends in their own regard.

I honestly don't really consider GnR hair metal for some reason though I see easily why they get in there. Nor Van Halen. Van Halen for me is the textbook example of California hard rock.

For some reason GnR just had more "heft" than most of the bands from that scene, and didn't feel like Poison or Warrant so I tended to exclude them. Even when everyone was in the "glam sucks" phase in the late 80's we were wearing out Appetite for Destruction. Had more grit, felt more "real".

Maybe that was just 16-18 year old me rationalizing. But AfD had a tone, vibe, whatever you want to call it, that was just incredible. When I think of greatest debut albums of any genre that is always in the top couple for me along with Van Halen's debut.

Actually, I think the same, they are by far more of a hard rock or rock n' roll band than stuff like Warrant or Poison. I think they are in the same league as Van Halen or AC/DC, there is no surprise that Axl Rose replaced Brian Johnson in the last AC/DC tour.

Another cool band that no one mentioned is Aerosmith, but I don't know if Tyler and Perry's band is considered glam metal.

Back in the MTV days Aerosmith was mixed in with glam all the time on shows like Headbangers Ball.

despite that i wouldn't really call Aerosmith a hair metal band. their classic 70s stuff is obviously too old, but their 80s stuff like Pump or Permanent Vacation arent really glam either. id put them in a similar boat to Tesla: a hard rock band that happened to exist in the late 80s so got lumped in with all of that stuff.

Agreed. Van Halen was one of the biggest inspirations for many of the 80s bands (along with Kiss, Aerosmith, Led Zep, Ted Nugent, etc) but I've never considered them part of that scene whatsoever.

Yes, Lillian Axe is fantastic. Their recent albums have been stellar, too.

Badlands was a quasi-all star band, featuring Jae E Lee from Ozzy, Ray Gillen who was in Sabbath for 20 minutes, and Eric Singer who was in Lita Ford's band (and Kiss for the past ~20 years). Absolutely stellar band.

Another one that came to mind was "Shy". Way underrated.

My opinion is kinda mixed, honestly. The early originators- Motley Crue, Dokken, Ratt, even going back to the origins with early Van Halen- all that stuff was great, and there were some pretty good bands in the early 1980s. I still love all that stuff, I still think "Shout at the Devil" was a great album and I still respect George Lynch as a great guitarist. But it got redundant for me pretty quickly. Too many cookie cutter bands with cookie cutter songs and cookie cutter imagery. By the time Warrant and Slaughter came out in the late 1980s, I thought it was just worn out and had nothing to offer. There were one or two decent bands from that era but most of it I honestly didn't care for. Even the older glam/hair bands that I had originally liked seemed to wimp out, burn out, and get super cheesy.

Is Kiss considered glam metal? Or just regular American hard rock? Because that would be another cool band from that era. I kind of get the notion that glam/hair metal was only the spandex and pink hair with makeup that bands like Poison or Warrant made, but I always thought that the genre was more comprehensive than that. I read people calling 80s Ozzy Osbourne and 80s Alice Cooper as part of the glam metal family too.

KISS, while not the most talented band in the world, are one of those bands who sorta transcend rock/metal micro-genres. First they leaned into the early & mid 70s glam rock movement (not glam METAL, but glam rock. Like NY Dolls, T Rex, Sparks, Ziggy era David Bowie, etc. Stuff that long predates hair metal.) Then came the flirting with disco. Then started leaning into 80s trends.

There's a good chance any given hair metal fan likes KISS but I wouldn't call them hair metal.

I tend to hold the Eddie Trunk position on this issue and don't use or acknowledge the term "hair metal" as a legitimate designation, it's a catchall pejorative term that lumps in bands that happened to surface during the same time period despite having disparate styles/sounds and reduces all of them to their image alone. Even the term "glam metal" doesn't really sit well with me since it was so horridly misused throughout the 90s and basically became a strawman for people who thought "real music" only came from Seattle between 1987 and 1992.

Anyhow, getting off the soapbox now, my first exposure to the 80s metal/rock scene was in 1987, and it was primarily music videos my old brothers had taped off of MTV by Motley Crue, Europe and Ratt. I was born in 1980, so even though I matured a bit early and formed most of my foundational opinions on music while in primary school, I was a bit late to the party. By 1989 my eldest brother had me listening to just about everything he was listening to at the time, which included a wide array of styles that covered thrash, NWOBHM, L.A. sleaze, and even some of the early extreme metal out of Celtic Frost and Death.

Since nobody in my 4th grade class really listened to anything heavier than Guns 'N' Roses, the whole division between the thrash and L.A. scenes was non-existent for me, so I didn't learn about any of that stuff until long after it was over. Nevertheless, I did notice that GnR did occasionally trash talk some of the prettier sounding bands of that era like Warrant, Cinderella and Bon Jovi. Nobody really got trashed for listening to any kind of metal or rock until the 2nd half of 1992 while I was in 7th grade, which is when the whole Nirvana craze had fully taken over (as many here already know, I never really jumped on the Grunge bandwagon, though I did like some of the bands that came out of it).

I still listen to the stuff, though apart from the deeper and more involved bands like WASP, Motley Crue, Dokken, Quiet Riot, Skid Row and a few others, it's only an occasional thing for me. I've also grown to appreciate some of the fringe players that came in towards the end of the scene's initial run like Badlands (not really a typical band for the topic under discussion) and especially Blue Murder, basically discovered the latter due to the end credits song of the Resident Evil 2 game on PS1's B-scenario being a ripoff of the song "Riot". lol



In the spirit of civility, let me simply state that I likewise feel glad that I never set foot on that site prior to just now. Sheesh, that has to be the dumbest fucking thing I've read so far this year.

There's some decent stuff within the glam era. Some of it has been pointed out already. Def Leppards first couple of albums are excellent, especially High N' Dry, despite the dodgy album art. Motley Crue's first album is really good. WASP were probably the best band of the era, and in my view got even better when they started moving on from glam towards their concept albums. I do like the first couple of Ratt records also.

Then you have the stuff that is pop music with guitars, stuff like Warrant and Poison. While Warrant do have some decent stuff, their biggest hits are absolutely rubbish. The less said about Poison, the better.

It's also worth mentioning that several established 80s bands ventured into glam territory, the results of which were almost universally tragic. Tygers of Pan Tang and Saxon were two of the more notable ones.

Hair? it gets in the way of sticks and strings, so...no;)

A few months ago I sat through most of Whitesnake's discography, thinking if Mikael from Opeth adored them there must be some decent tunes. I didn't find anything I enjoyed even a little bit, which doesn't really encourage me to delve into some other heralded bands like WASP and Tesla.

At the commercial end of metal, it's pretty hard to defne what qualifies as "hair metal", heavy rock, melodic metal, glam or sleaze because the term was coined as an umbrella term for all kinds of bands that had metal elements, deliberate airplayability and a beauty box.

Personally, I've always liked all those subgenres including AOR, their next-door neighbour, and think there should be more "hair" content in discussions (not necessarily in the Archives section though) because most online and offline metal mags treat it as a part of the family. I remember the Monsters of Rock Festival '88 where Great White / Guns N' Roses, David Lee Roth and Kiss played alongside Testament / Megadeth, Anthrax and Maiden – and that's the way it should be.

However, I hardly know any newer bands from the last 30+ years because the few ones I tried were subpar, and I quickly gave up on that whole area.

Great genre. I do find the bad stuff is really bad, but there's so much good stuff out there. As far as underrated bands go, I'd say Autograph and Kane Roberts (solo). I love the massive hooks, shreddy guitar solos, and great singers. The imagery is awesome too.

I wasn't around in the 80s, but it is sort of funny that my favourite genre of music is thrash, but I love all the glam stuff.

I hate hair metal. All those guys wearing lipsticks, make-up, they did penticure on their nails, wore their sisters' clothes and shit (Black Sabbath and Pentagram also did this but it was to look more psychedelic. They still looked ridicoulous don't get me wrong) was ridicolous and not metal at all (I'm looking at you Poison mostly). Hair metal was an unecessary progress of metal movement and a pathetic attempt to commercialize metal. The musicians were talented af but the music was trash....

If anyone doubts the metalness of hair bands - i encourage you all to check out Twisted Sister's live performance of Tear it Loose from Reading in '82 I believe. Savage. Slayer levels of intensity.

Other good glam/hair/whatever:

Dokken
Ratt
WASP
80s KISS
Cinderella
Motley Crue

I like straight up rock, I like hard rock, I like metal. I like guitar driven music. So for me to not like "hair/glam" metal would be strange I think. Some great guitar players in that scene.

Lots of good music from those bands. The first three Bon Jovi albums are great. White Lion. Tesla. But it's not metal. It all came from 70's hard rock, Aerosmith's sound and Van Halen's stage show is what made it. The looks were just 80's fashion. Both Aerosmith and Kiss looked the part in the 80s, although Kiss were at their heaviest then.

If you never saw Cinderella (and disregarded the name) and just listened to the music you would never label it "hair metal", though they wore more make up than Poison.
The only thing metal about those bands was how they took it to the extremes, and I respect that.