It can be rightfully said that Hair Metal killed metal. The story usually goes something like this: in 1991 Kurt Kobain and Nirvana came along and ran Metal out of town. It is true, but they are forgetting that Metal was already in the coffin. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Sound Garden and Alice in Chains were the nails.
Behold:
Those riffs in the opener sound like they were written for a metalled up version of the California Raisins. The song and video are utterly vapid, made up entirely of late 1980's pop and tripe. It is nothing...
Sorry, had to go out listen to some Maiden after watching that.
So Metal was already dead, and the culprit was hair metal.
Briefly, this was metal dressed up, made up and teased out. It had little in common with say Metallica and Slayer. It wasn't dark at all. Instead Hair Metal was about good time party down music. Some record exec somewhere figured out that metal band audiences were about 90% young men. Why not strip it down a bit and get girls to listen?
It worked. In the late 1989 my girlfriend and her BFF used to argue over who was hotter, Brett, from Poison, of Vince, from Motley Crue.
Poison is of course the best example.
And...
Ok, ok, I admit it. When I was first getting into metal in 87-88 the hair stuff is what I tried first. In fact the first metal album I ever bought was White Snake, Slide it in:
Look, its what was on MTV at the time.
Now a lot of solid bands where lumped in with the hair metal scene: Great White, Tesla etc....they weren't really hair bands but blues based hard rock bands. I'd also like to draw attention to Cinderella:
Their third album, Heartbreak Station is a masterpiece.
But after listening to the glam metal which rose to teh top in '87 and dominated in '88 I got into other things. That is, hair metal led by to Zeppelin and Sabbath and Metallica and AC/DC and on and on...
Besides, go listen to Nothing but a Good Time. There are some great riffs in there.
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