According to Wikipedia's definition, it is described musically as "it uses traditional hard rock and heavy metal songs while adding pop-influenced catchy hooks and guitar riffs." Isn't that the recipe for the perfect hard rock genre? It takes the best things about hard rock and pop and combines them. What could be so bad about that?
Also it was the last time when rock and roll was edgy and dangerous and rock stars roamed the Earth.
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Pop music and rock will never belong without sacrificing the artistic merit of one another in favor of novelty/superficiality. In the case of hair metal/rock, it mostly always sacrifices it's heaviness, rawness and grandiosity in favor of simplicity.
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Will never belong to what exactly?
Together. They can never merge and combine into one, and will never be compatible.
Terrible drumming for one. Terrible lyrics for another. Everything else is great. But bad rhythm is unforgivable.
Every famous rock group is exactly what you are describing. Rock is pop.
Canterbury scene bands developed by trying to make danceable versions Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie and other jazz greats. The process didn't make their music chart topping, but it created a unique movement. While at times whimsical and sometimes with hooks, it rarely sacrificed anything, because those elements were used for aesthetic purposes. The other obvious genre in which this is done - shoegaze. Sadly, not a very prolific genre, although a highly influential one. Aside from Loveless and Tsumanne, which I recommend to anyone interested in the genre and guitar, no one really had as much imagination as Kevin Shields.
The lines have gotten blurred over the years. In the traditional sense, every genre besides jazz and classical music is popular music. And it is called that, because of the record labels which were when they existed sometimes responsible for promotion of the music through album formats.
Rock is popular, but ubiquity ≠ pop music. Otherwise, dream pop, glitch pop, chamber pop, indie pop and baroque pop would each have as much commercial success as dance-pop common on the Hot 100. And no, I don't agree with the classification of "Pop, Classical, Traditional Folk and Art" music, as it's too generalized and fails to consider the uniqueness of different genres/styles/ideas.
Dude from the age of elvis and chuck it has always been pop.
Hair metal wasn't that terrible. I mean, it at least had badass guitar solos and music videos with hot girls.
If anything, this is a recipe for a "perfect rock genre". You also have to understand the reasons for the existence of hair metal bands. Studio veterans or handsome men assembled to produce hits. Mandatory acoustic ballads and a hard song for credibility with filler? Sounds familiar?
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Hair metal is metal for people who don't like metal, rock for people who don't like rock, pop for people who don't like pop, wrapped up in a package of spandex, sleeveless shirts, men wearing makeup and vapid lyrics which are 99.9% euphemisms about sex.
And then you turned 16 and realized that there's music out there with more to offer.
Yet another confirmation that I'm wasting my time trying to have an actual discussion about anything on this sad excuse for a board...
post a song that is pure rock, the absolute pinnacle of the pure genre contaminated by nothing non-rock
There's some hair metal I actually like, but most of the top hits can only be listened to as a joke. Like when you're drunk with your friends belting out hungry like the wolf or journey songs.
Not him (I was the one who posted the very first comment that started this debate), but here. This is more along the lines of Screamo/Hardcore Punk, but there's literally nothing here that can be considered pop in any sense.
put on some ratt (round and round), winger (17) and motley crue maybe stick some van halen classics on (panama, hot for teacher). this shit is good music. There was just a backlash because it was over the top sex and drugs and weenies like kurt cobain said it lacked artistic integrity. he was probably just jealous because he had to service courtney love.
This just sounds like a country song sung and played badly.
literally who
It was fake, canned bullshit, a watered-down caricature of 70s hard rock with typical bad 80s wind tunnel production. Most hair metal had no dynamics, it was just a flat wall of noise and the bands poorly imitated Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, and Van Halen. You'd have a singer who sounded superficially like Robert Plant without all the nuances in his vocals and a guitarist who copied a few of Eddie Van Halen's more obvious tricks.
The lyrics were also absolutely braindead and had nothing in them except partying and getting laid.
Write me a hook, right now. I hate hair metal. But you have to admit that they wrote some fucking hooks.
Prove to me that it's easy. Write me a hook.
This was the first Rock and Roll song, because Chuck Berry invented the genre and got the chance to record it when he showed what he had come up with to Muddy Waters while acting as a session guitarist for his blues band. If we are to consider Rock and Roll to be anything other than derivative of other forms of music, in which case everything is just glorified gregorian chant, then this is 100% pure and unadulterated rock and roll since it was the inception of the genre as a distinct category with hallmarks, etc.
This exactly. It capitalized on the beauty of rock music and distorted it to this asinine caricature, along with bringing in obnoxious stereotypes of the genre. The disgusting hedonism, boring, unimaginative lyrics about debauchery, and dear lord, those costumes make drag queens wince in cowardice!
Oh, you wanted FAMOUS rock bands! Well, how about this song, from an album that went DIAMOND and sold nearly 30 million copies worldwide?!
Where's the pop?
Who would have thought to mix rap with post grunge in such an awful way?
The real beginning of the hair metal explosion was when Quiet Riot broke in 1983. They were only big for one year, but they caused record labels to quickly start signing hair metal groups--Dokken, Hanoi Rocks, W.A.S.P., and Ratt all quickly emerged in 83-84. Kiss took off their makeup and enjoyed a career revival. Then there was a pause in 1985, and after that came the next wave in 1986 with Bon Jovi, Cinderella, and Poison.
The first wave hair metal like Ratt and Dokken were passable hard rock but the later bands got steadily worse and worse. The very last wave in 88-90 like White Lion, Nitro, and Warrant were a total joke and little more than vapor.
>Prove to me that it's easy. Write me a hook.
It was actually pretty easy. Write Desmond Child a check and he'll pen your next hit power ballad.
No, I mean do you have a hook written? Give me something poppy.
Not him, but I have one. Of course, you'd probably hate it automatically in an attempt to undermine his argument.
Let my arms unfold like a flower
Blooming from the frozen ground
And wrap you suddenly
Until you're safe and sound
(1/2)
Here's another, less "poetic" one.
I'm digging deeper
I'm lurking deeper
I'm going deeper, deeper, deeper
I'm just exploring
Unraveling the world
And I won't stop until I find your heart
are yall seriously telling me you dont dig steel panther
Glam is objectively alpha and therefore absolutely triggers numales.
The inability to get into Motley Crue is textbook omega.
this
Another thing about hair metal bands you notice is that the guys were usually completely interchangeable. For comparison, Steven Tyler is Aerosmith. You couldn't have the band without him. But you could swap around the guitarists, vocalists, etc in Cinderella, Poison, and White Lion and nobody could tell the difference.
Hair metal was at best adequate music for a high school party and nothing more.
Yeah, nobody is going to notice the stars of the bands aren't there. Aren't you really just protecting how utterly forgettable your numale indie bands are?
>Terrible drumming for one.
That shrill, compressed production with the WHOA, YEAH choruses and snare reverb drums was pretty annoying.
Ratt were a little more laid-back sounding and not as histrionic as some bands of the period and they didn't quite have so many partying and fucking sluts songs, their songwriting was somewhat like Nickelback in that it tended to focus on white trash relationship drama.
you're wrong and annoying
This shit wasn't rock music, it was the minstrel show version of rock. The real rock in the 80s was Sonic Youth, REM, Pixies, Replacements, etc.
>Also it was the last time when rock and roll was edgy and dangerous
Hair metal was more "dangerous" and "edgy" than grunge? Lol no. It was just a natural continuation of shit like Aerosmith and Van Halen. At least when Nirvana, Soundgarden and AIC came along it was seen as a big departure from the kind of Rock music that had dominated the last decade.
AND, if you refuse to admit Grunge was "edgier" than Hair metal then at the very least shit like Guns N' Roses outdid Hair metal at being "dangerous".
what an embarrassing opinion
Alot of people shit on KISS, but honestly you can't tell me that they got better in the 80s with songs like "Burn, Bitch, Burn" and "Let's Put The X In Sex".
Judas Priest were NWOBHM and not Hair Metal. Also, Painkiller was released in 1990 and the first recording with their new drummer. Great song but a big stretch for trying to show off Hair metal drumming.
The very last wave of teen girls who bought hair metal albums and wanted to bone the lead singer was in about 1990. The musical landscape in 1991 shifted dramatically.
Like any genre of popular music, the flaw isn't the medium but the people operating within it. Hair metal was music written by vacuous plebs for vacuous plebs. It never even aspired to be anything more than forgettable trash.
One day you'll turn 35 and realize that maybe there really isn't. Maybe all that profundity you sensed when listening to your favorite albums, that holy presence you felt, was actually a reflection of the expectations you brought to bear on these albums, expectations originally produced by legions of young men not dissimilar to yourself, all hoping to one day finally fashion an identity out of your disorganized playlists and media collections.
Music should be good to dance to, or it should blow your fucking mind out the window ie live orchestra. The shit in between is 99.9% deformed half breed bullshit that needs to be shot behind the chemical shed - that goes for all Sup Forums and scarufficore.
I'm old and I remember KISS in the 70s. Yeah, I liked them when I was in the 6th grade but like most of my peers, I moved on by the time they came out with Dynasty. By the time their 80s unmasked period started, I could have cared less. It smacked of a mild degree of desperation anyway.
Their Tiger Stadium show during the reunion tour in 96 was within driving distance but again I could have cared less.
Over here in the UK, hair metal was completely irrelevant. Most of us just shook our heads and thought "What is this nonsense? Just rubbish for American chavs." It was honestly so insignificant here that few of us here could even be bothered to complain about it.
>only listening to dance tracks and orchestral music
age hasn't only made you senile, grandpa; it's also made you have shit taste.
this is literally the only good hair metal song and it's only good after 3 bowls
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I was an 80s teen and nobody took these bands seriously. They were your sister's music. She'd have a poster of Poison on the wall and want to marry Brett Michaels while the guys listened to Metallica, Venom, Sepultura, Anthrax, etc.
You ever seen "The Decline of Western Civilization: The Metal Years" when they interview the one guy from White Lion (I think that was the band?) and he brags about wanting to be a rock star so he can get rich and have sex. That music was completely empty lyrically and had nothing to say beyond sitting in a hot tub in Beverly Hills surrounded by strippers.
Not .
lmao orchid is literally the most famous screamo band
Cool, Kip Winger's nephew is here. Nah, your uncle's band was shit.
After hair metal died out, a lot of those bands got into country rock, in fact quite a few hair metal anthems like Pour Some Sugar On Me and Cherry Pie could just as easily be a Keith Urban or Toby Keith tune. Brett Michaels is a big blues and country enthusiast. I think pop country to a large extent took over the demographic niche that hair metal (as well as 70s corporate rock) used to occupy.
>are yall seriously telling me you dont dig steel panther
They formed in 2008. Not in 1988. Periodically, not a hair metal band. They're also supposedly a satire band. A far cry from Weird Al, not to mention Zappa. What's there to like?
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>Also it was the last time when rock and roll was edgy and dangerous and rock stars roamed the Earth.
Nah, Thrash is when metal was at it's most dangerous. Neckbreaking riffs, wanky solos, and loose-cannon band members was everything Rock&Roll should have been
>Glam is objectively alpha
Yes, alpha...
Dee Snyder is a good skin
They seem pretty fucking cool
Ratt-Round and Round is the best song ever
Dokken are unironically good. Great, even.
>Dee Snyder is a good skin
Whatever that means, but I would like to have half as much hair as him at 61.
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It's dee snider, he's a jew who took a german name, not scheiden, not even snyder, snider, he's a knock off fake everything
he's a jew rip off artist
This. The attitude, the look and the sound all add up to the ultimate conclusion of the idea of Rock and Roll. Being as heavy as you can without losing that sense of melody and having a look and identity that is unique to the genre without being overly cliche or gimmicky. Long hair, blue jeans, leather jackets and t shirts are undeniably Rock and Roll whether it's Guns N' Roses, Megadeth, Motorhead, Nirvana or The Ramones. None of that sprayed up poofy hair or eyeliner bullshit.
>Also it was the last time when rock and roll was edgy and dangerous and rock stars roamed the Earth.
Sonic Youth, the enirety of post punk bands and gothic rock were their contemporaries, but were far dangerous and "edgy".
Ok, it's the "JOOS", we get it.
Decline of Western Civilization Part II is a good movie for anyone interested in this type of music and the culture that surrounded it
Far more*
Ratt weren't that bad, it was really that later group of bands who came out post-1985 that stank up the joint.
You can see the beginning of the end in it though, with the interviews with Lemmy and Megadeth showing more artistic integrity in their small segments than every other band in the documentary.
As far as other genres which were dangerous and "edgy" at the time - industrial.
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Only good "Hair Metal" bands worth checking out, is Steel Panther, and maybe a handful of Poison songs.
Yeah even Christgau admitted that the old guard like Ozzy and Alice Cooper made a lot more sense than the young kids like that dude from Odin who talks about wanting to get rich and have sex. The guys from the 70s wanted to make fun, interesting music and give jaded teens a voice. The newbies just wanted to pose in an MTV video with rent-a-girls.
> he thinks Judas Priest is hair metal
It's pretty easy to pick out a hair metal band. Does it have all of the following?
>power ballads
>no bass
>weak guitar tones
>pop-focused songwriting
>power chords instead of riffs
>cross-dresser wardrobe
>gang vocals
By that logic, I could claim the Rolling Stones were hair metal. Take for example Happy.
>pop songwriting
Check.
>gang vocals
Check.
>thin guitar/absence of low end
Check.
>lack of heavy riffs
Check.
>Mick Jagger cross-dressing
Check.
Reminds me of rap
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