🤔THIS Actually Killed Hair Metal!
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- Опубликовано: 5 сен 2024
- Let's dive into what exactly happened to the Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, and the Hair Bands of the 1980s. Some people blame grunge, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, or excess. Come inside, and let's find out.
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For me personally, I was crushed when Hair Metal came to an end. I got into a few Grunge bands, but I preferred to just keep playing my cassette tapes of the 70’s and 80’s!
I hear that! It took me a while, as well.
Yeah, 80s party rock garbage was tailor made for sheep like you.
I completely agree that ballads played the biggest role in 80's Metal being pulled aside. (It never really went away.) I believe that if those bands had been allowed to focus on making the heavy music that made them famous in the first place, they would have continued on.
I think another overlooked aspect is the simple fact that the 80s hair band audience grew older. The fan base for the following generation wanted their own music and music stars rather than hand me down has beens.
Yes! The record-buying public is a young one. That public ages out every 10 years or so.
@@RockNewsDesk i also think people my age who were 14-15 in 1988-89 the height of hair metal left hair metal behind when we started college in 1992 grunge was more in tune with college experience
@@bb-gc2tx I don't disagree with that. It was a whole movement. It got very stale.
These released in 1990. Megadeth - Rust in Piece, Judas Priest Painkiller and Slayer - Seasons in the Abyss.
3 of the best metal albums. 1989... WASP - The Headless Children.
Some others from 1990+... Queensryche - Empire, Metal Church - The Human Factor, Savatage - Streets, Fate's Warning - Parallels, Faith No More - Angel Dust, Dream Theater - Images and Words, Ozzy - No More Tears, Annihilator - Never Neverland, 1989 Testament - Practice What You Preach
Lynch Mob, Firehouse, Winger
The whole “Grunge killed hair metal” thing was basically a marketing slogan that was spearheaded by Geffen Records and then picked up by MTV and rock radio. Glam went through a period of decline in 1987 due to fatigue among pioneering bands like Motley Crue and WASP, both of whom ended up switching out the glam image for leather jackets and jeans. It was buoyed by continual strides made by Poison and Warrant, but even they were starting to shy away from the overt glam image by 1990-91, just before Nirvana rose to prominence. Between the ascent of thrash metal in the mid-80s, and the subsequent rise of more extreme sub-genres (Napalm Death and Morbid Angel were making the rounds on MTV when grunge was supposedly ruling the airwaves), the factors behind the decline of 80s metal are quite numerous. Nirvana did, however, kill grunge in the sense that they became the standard for most of the copycats that would emerge in the mid-90s, mostly because it was far easier to ape Cobain’s stupidly simple guitar riffs than try to emulate Soundgarden or Alice In Chains.
Well said my guy I will say warrants dog eat dog whille still keeping there sound was a bad ass album heavy melodic and actually very well written it’s like they were aware music was changing and we’re doing there best to try and adapt it’s just a shame it came out in 92 instead of 1990 I honestly think had dog eat dog cone out instead of cherry pie it would have been a different story for them and possibly they might have been taken more seriously
@@joehobbs3277 You're probably right, Uncle Tom's Cabin was an interesting evolutionary stride for Warrant's sound and should have been the title of the album, and had Dog Eat Dog been their sophomore album, it would have rivaled what Skid Row did with Slave To The Grind easily. Personally I never saw Warrant as an unserious band, because I never bought into the mentality that gave rise to grunge in the first place. I was fine with darker bands like Alice In Chains and Soundgarden coming into the scene, but the idea that the Seattle sound rising meant that the Sunset Strip had to fall struck me as royally stupid. There was plenty of room on the radio and MTV for both, and you can point to Kurt Cobain's heroin-infused babble about "muh artistic integrity" as one of the reasons it happened. Frankly, I refuse to be lectured on the subject of artistic integrity from a guy who made a name for himself plagiarizing riffs from 70s hard rock, 80s new wave and punk bands.
@@hellsunicorn agreed and yes I never thought of warrant as just another party band of course they had serious songs I mean the stuff on dog eat dog was in my opinion a perfect blend of serious and party tunes like I said it’s just a shame the timing was wrong but at least when you read most reviews people agree it’s one of there best albums. and yeah as for Kurt cobain me not being a nirvana fan and never a fan of him as a person it’s ironic that the rifts on nirvana albums pretty much sound like knock offs of much better bands like the pixies black flag etc so for him to babble on about artistic integrity whilst putting down other bands yeah well done mr spokesperson of a genaration. But yeah Alice in chains and soundgarden predate what people know as grunge anyway they just got lumped in with the other bands while to me there music was far from grunge
@@joehobbs3277but warrant was just another party band with cheesy ballads and really gay image
Motley and Guns N’ Roses were real. Record companies kept signing shit bands and it killed it. But look at it now everyone wants the 80s bands back hmmmm
Motley were posers dude, theyre only was following the trend
Motley lost it after Shout.
I was in music at the time. And if you look online you can find the interviews with people like Lita Ford going over what happened. The "death" of Hard Rock or Hair Rock or Glam Rock was not "organic". It didn't fade or die, it was murdered by record companies who had enormous power at that time. They could tell radio stations and MTV what to play and what not to. Kids would lap up whatever the corporations fed to them. Nirvanna claimed to be rebelling against corporate music all the while being propped up by those corporations and the hair bands being blacklisted by them.
Exactly. Then you had MTV shoving videos in Beavis and Butthead. They would play a hairband and say "this sucks" and play a grunge song and say "this rocks". It was very clear what the industry was doing to these bands. Many of them, like Kix, had to file bankruptcy because the labels wouldn't push their albums so they didn't sell. People can't buy what they don't hear or have access to.
On a hair metal documentary some hair groups like poison were talking in interviews about how glam metal had just ran it's course,that it got to the point that all the bands were beginning to sound alike there was nothing original anymore.
Exactly. The record companies start signing bands that sound like the other big bands. They follow the formula, and it becomes boring.
Pantera killed it all with Vulgar
Such a great album.
Speultura Chaos AD!!!
Soundgarden was incredible..
So good!
Bottom line is hair metal and metal music no longer p***** off parents. Parents did not like seeing gangster rappers on their kids's walls So in turn kids Rebelled even more.just like they did in the 70s and 80s with rock music.
By 86/87, the rock bands seemed to me to be a joke. Appetite for Destruction was a tornado of fresh air. It was legit. And epic.
There was some good music coming out into the early 90s, but, yeah, so much of it was watered down fluff.
Guns N Roses was 100% glam rock (glam has roots in 70s punk). They are even wearing make-up in their first music video (Sweet Child). The band created a sub-genre of Glam Metal called Sleaze Metal (see: Skid Row).
G'NR sold-out *hugely* with their pathetic follow-up releases on the early 90s.
Pantera's first 4 albums were glam metal (aka Party Metal). Including the 1988 album featuring Phil Anselmo.
Don't let some douchbag "journalist" from a 1997 magazine article (who coined the term "hair metal" long after the fact) tell us what's cool and what isn't. Never bought into it.
Every rock poser loves Guns N Roses... but they were hardly the only good 80s metal/hardrock band
@@RockNewsDesk Megadeth - Rust in Piece.. 1990. Judas Priest Painkiller. 1990. Slayer - Seasons in the Abyss.
1990 started with a bang.
@@V3ntilator That time had great music. Even into 1992 with Countdown to Extinction.
@@RockNewsDeskYep. And WASP The Headless Children in 1989 too.
The thing that made Guns last is the variety of their influences. I heard everything from the blues to The Rolling Stones to R&B to Elton John to punk in what they did. That's what set them apart from all the rest (including grunge, which was kind of one-dimensional).
Grunge didn't kill hair metal- staleness did. Multiple genres have coexisted for as long as there has been rock music. It's just like you said in the video- too many cookie-cutter bands covering the same lyrical topics, wearing the same clothes, having the same hair... add to that the fact that their audience grew up and the bands didn't. To the next generation, a bunch of guys in their late 30s/early-to-mid 40s still singing about partying and getting the chicks was just never going to be authentic.
Absolutely. Ten years of (mostly) the same music. The audience grew up, but the bands (and record companies) kept pumping out the same music
It wasn't staleness. It was the record industry and it was very inorganic. People would much rather listen to 1000s of cookie-cutter bands putting out great music than something different that quite frankly sucks. We had no internet at the time. When you have MTV running shows bashing the hairbands and praising the new music, record companies shelving the hairband albums even when they were contractually obligated to release them, and radio stations cutting them, that is the reason hairbands went away. They had no other way to reach their audience. The video already shows how some hairbands still found success in the 90s because those are the bands that the labels still pushed.
You don't have to look very far to see this. Look at Danger Danger's 3rd album "Cockroach." This was their 3rd album and Sony was contractually obligated to release it but instead, shelved it. The band self-released it almost 10 years later once they fought to get the rights to it back. Look at Kix with their Show Business album. This was released after the successful Hotwire. The label gave them tons of money to create a big tour, then when the tour came out, the label dropped them and forced them to pay it all back causing them to file for bankruptcy. Because of this, they could not use the Kix name until years later. 100s of other bands saw the same thing happen. Why did the new Danger Danger not do well? It wasn't because they were stale, or had a power ballad, or that people were tired of the genre. It was because the record industry screwed them. The album was not released and people cannot be fans of something they cannot hear. One final example would be Damn Yankees. They were so popular in the early 90s that the record label paid them $1 million to go away because grunge would not have taken off if hairbands were still allowed access to their fans.
Staleness is the furthest thing from the truth. Guns n Roses was quite different. No one sounds anything like Winger with their tight offbeat rhythm section. Extreme was completely different. Enuff Z Nuff had a completely different sound (more like the Beatles meet Cheap Trick). The genre certainly was far from being stale. Not to mention that staleness completely contradicts the supposed shift that happened around 85-86. If it shifted to sound different, then it wasn't stale.
How could you forget Bon Jovi, one of the bigest 80s rock band? They put an excellent album in 1992.
I definitrly didn't forget them. But, Bon Jovi also disappeared for the rock crowd as the 90s progressed. I went to see them live in the mid-90s. They make a big effort to stay away from anything that could make them look like a hard rock band. Even Sambora altered some of his leads to make them less flashy.
@@RockNewsDesk yeah, you are right about that
The same producers who told them to wear the big hair and include at least one ballad on each album, told them hair metal is out and it’s all about grunge just a couple years later.
Absolutely. And, MTV turned their backs on the bands that helped build the channel. That's just how the cycle goes, I guess.
@@RockNewsDesk I'm not sure that's how the cycle goes. It's just bad business decisions. MTV is probably the only company in history with no direct competitor that can go from the top and stick a knife in its own back. Let's face it, the visuals of the 80s were just as much a part of it as the music. Some people try to say it was all about the image, but it was both. You had to have the songs and the image.
Once MTV used Beavis & Butthead to drive out the hairbands, with the record labels on board and shelving new releases, it was only a mere 5-7 years before MTV had to change its programming and get rid of videos. After the 80s visuals, everything else was boring. Now we had a genre of music with no visuals and songs that were so bad that the whole genre barely made it 5 years.
Grunge was a special genre. It took off in 93 with the push of Beavis & Butthead (MTVs most watched show ever) and by 98 was all but dead. It died on its own, and it has not aged nearly as well as the hairband era. One has to wonder if MTV knew what they were doing when they made this move.
I threw up a little in my mouth when he said "Grunge was about authenticity." Grunge was far more contrived than anything in the 80s, which is why it quickly burned out - but hair metal bands still tour, even in old age.
You think so? Maybe it's all about perception. I don't mean that to sound dismissive. Maybe the flannel and lack of hair spray and spandex their way if saying, "Screw taking two hours to get ready for a show." Ha ha!
@@RockNewsDeskgreat video and agree 💯
@@quit293 Thank you!
Grunge got too far up its own ass to keep drawing an audience.
I agree grunge disappeared quickly as it came back then
Stephen Pearcy 100% nailed it with that quote. Who's to blame...the record companies for throwing a contract at anyone that played that kind of music.
It's never been mentioned how at the end of every decade a new musical trend takes over (Jazz 40's, Elvis/R&R 50's, Hippie Rock 60's, Corporate Rock 70's, Punk/New Wave 80's, Grunge 90's, etc.) It's usually just the next generation coming of age and their sound taking over from the prior bunch of musicians. Happens every decade.
Radio stations , MTV, & record labels pushing grunge had a lot to do with it. Agree with a lot of your points.
Jack Russell stated in a interview capital was going to drop them when they released the Psycho City album in September 1992
and released some other artists. That is a fantastic album if not the best Great White album & should have topped the charts. They didn’t get any promotion from the label. Same happened to RATT with the detonator album.
I never listened to that Great White album, but I loved Detonator. I'll to go back and check that one out.
@@RockNewsDesk you want be disappointed. That album has at least 5 songs that are top 20 caliber. Doctor me , step on you , love is a lie, big goodbye & maybe someday are great. The entire album is fantastic no fillers.
@@JimbobZ17 I know "Big Goodbye.'
@@RockNewsDesk another album by them that’s over looked is Let it Rock. It came out in 1996 and is a solid album with good songs.
I am 59, loved the hair band era. There are some valid points to what is said, I think that there were alot of cookie cutter cooy cat bands out there and the radio stations and MTV only seemed to play the same stuff over and over and that got stale and old and helped kill off Hair Bands in the States. There were many bands pumping out music during that period that most have never heard of... Interestingly I find that over in Europe, while not entirely Hair Metal, there seem to be alot of great bands that get no air play here in the states or seldom tour the states....Rock ain't Dead, just moved continents.
I can agree. I was never a grunge fan, but I was really into the early hair bands. It did become watered down, but I put the biggest blame on ballads. in those days, we were looking for hard rock and heavy metal, not pop songs. As for "Was Alice In Chains grunge"? L7 has become one of my top favorite bands, probably in my top 5 favorite. They're kind of punk metal, but they get labeled as grunge because they came from that Seattle scene at the time. I'm also a big fan of Nirvana, but I don't feel they could simply be labeled as grunge. They could seriously rock. Look up a list of grunge bands, and there are many different sounds with the different bands that are listed. I really don't understand it. I'm not sure if "grunge" is a sound or is it just the scene?
I think the times were changing. I listened to grunge in the 90s but I also loved death metal and thrash during that time. I think I was sick of hearing about the drugs I wasn't using and sick of hearing about the women I wasn't fucking, not to mention the clothing I couldn't afford. But darker music, grunge, death metal, thrash, it was angry cold and fucked up. That's how life was. I identified with people who had broken hearts because I had a broken heart. Hair metal was never about being real, it was a fantasy that left you high and dry. The other music was real.
My teen years were the 80's and I've been saying FOREVER that Grunge didn't kill 80's rock (hate the term Hair Metal) - it was the scene itself. Exactly! Too many cookie cutter bands. Any band with a decent singer, guitar shredder and one good song got signed. I got sick of it myself. I was never big into Grunge- but Alice in Chains is an all time favorite- and i agree they are closer to metal
The 90s had some great bands. Alice in Chains and Soundgarden were awesome!
Wow, great comment, I do agree with it...were hoping a post like this and boooom, here it is!
When I heard Nirvanas Nevermind album I didn't consider it a different kind of music I just thought it was a kick ass hard rock album.
Really? I remember the first time I saw That Video in the fall of '91 and thought "wow, that's different." Cool but definitely different.
@@Fritha71 well I agree it was definitely different as that it wasn't pop hair metal. I mean I didn't see it as being something that changed the musical landscape and everything it eventually came to be known as I just thought it was a back to basics great hard rock album and didn't think it was a new form of music. It was a breath of fresh air for sure.
@@kravin74 Back to the basics, and yet fresh for the time. I agree with you.
@@AFloridaSon yes sir! Exactly !
Over saturation to the point where it pretty much became a parody of itself, Hair Metal ultimately did itself in.
Yep. How many bands can we sign that sound like Motley and look like Bon Jovi?
The same thing happens every few years. The bandwagon gets full and becomes a mockery of itself.
Absolutely. I remember it happening with Nu-Metal. All the "clone" bands popped up, and it was all downhill from there.
I think there's a generational component that has to be factored into the decline of Hair Metal. Grunge is more of an attitude and outlook on life than a particular sound. The dark and dismal message resonated tremendously with Gen X. It was music we could really relate to and identify with. I personally like both styles. Depends on my mood.
Rock News Desk: Great subject. Just like 91' you never mentioned Skid Rows, Slave to the Grind. They took a left turn in June of 91' but still crashed. Why do you think?They were established.
Wikipedia:
Slave to the Grind is the second studio album by American heavy metal band Skid Row, released on June 11, 1991, by Atlantic Records. The album displayed a harsher sound than its predecessor and lyrics that avoided hard rock cliches.
And Slave debuted at #1.
@@RockNewsDesk What's even more interesting, Skid Row also introduced the world to Pantera on this tour as well, Cowboys from Hell. Yet Grunge overshadowed this shift in metal music.
@@jerryflick7187 Pantera started that Skid Row tour a few days before Vulgar Display came out. I caught a couple shows on that tour. Amazing!
@@RockNewsDesk I seen that Tour and stood front row in front of Dime. Had no clue what was going on but it was hitting. An x stole the pic of Dime. I think maybe it was just Sebastian image possibly. Headbanger Ball Had Monkey Business in rotation against Metallica Enter Sandman. I personally think Monkey Business Owens Sandman.
@@jerryflick7187 I'm a big Skid Row fan. The new stuff with Erik on vocals is also really good.
You're correct about Alice in Chains Soundgarden and STP. They weren't grunge so what's left as to why Rock died. Rap music is why. A new generation accepted and wanted more of it. IMO
I think it was a process of evolution that killed the hairbands. Just as early metal/hard rock evolved into hair metal, hair metal evolved into alt metal. If this didn't happen we would still be listening to Benny Goodman.
Who is your favorite. 1983?
Im a 90s kid , born in 91 , but have a huge admiration for alot of the 80s bands , Ratt , Warrant , Cinderella , Winger , Poison , Skid Row, Tesla, WASP and Mötley Crüe ! Grunge was never my thing , except for Alice In Chains ...
I feel like grunge had much more of a variety, compared to a lot of hair metal kinda sounding the same, which people were tired of the same thing, aka why people shifted twords grunge, because it had a sense of variety band by band
Yep. It was time for something new. The hair bands stuff was so watered down and homogeneous.
Agree to a point. But then grunge started to do the same thing, lets all mumble like Eddie Vedder.
the Corabi album was great
Yes!
The last solid kick ass album the Crue ever did. Better than Girls n Feelgood IMO.
Citing Def Leppard's, Aerosmith's, Guns 'n' Roses', and Van Halen's '90s successes makes no sense in this video since none of those bands is/was a "hair metal" band. Three of them were successful before that sub-genre of music even existed.
I think you might be a little misguided or you're missing the train on Warrant.. if you listen to the album Cherry Pie.. and realize the record company stopped it from being called Machine Gun..(a song released on the next album DogEatDog ..) you'll see they were already progressing out of the type of music in the first album from 1989..I saw them 11 times in concert through the years and never did they wear the white leather nor play up the teased hair. The release of Dog Eat Dog in August of 1992 ..a much much heavier record had to have been written and recorded Before grunge even really became a thing.. so you can call it terrible timing but I wouldn't call it jumping on the band wagon. Dog Eat Dog takes on serious subjects, is a great listen and is pretty heavy in general.. the album belly to belly (warrant 96) came much later in fact after the album ultraphobic.. so to say that they tried to jump on the bandwagon ..I guess maybe eventually.. but only after cherry pie was a pretty big hit despite the title track being the exception not the rule on that album of it being kind of a bending to the record company.. Warrants main sin as far as I'm concerned was just that.. not standing their ground . Dog Eat Dog listen to it.. and remember.. they didn't know grunge was coming when it was written and recorded.. and they didn't wear the shit from the videos after the initial record when the were still trying to break through and at the mercy of the record company execs. Are they the heaviest band or straight up metal.. no.. were the writing and songs great hard rock yes.. in no way some of the crap that was all copy cat and no real discernable talent.. just an opinion
Aren't opinions great? Ha ha! I don't feel I said anything to insult Warrant. I didn't mention Dog Eat Dog or Ultraphobic, but that doesn't negate the fact they recorded the Warrant 96 album and wore bowling shirts on stage when they performed.
I really liked Warrant, and still believe Jami Lane was an exceptional songwriter. According to Jani Lane, himself, the Cherry Pie record was going to be called Uncle Tom's Cabin. 🤷
I tend to think of bands like Kiss and Twisted Sister as glam bands, not hair bands. They were heavier and were at the forefront of trends. Bands like Poison and Warrant were hair bands. They weren't doing anything new, just cashing in on established fads with mediocre songs. For me, authenticity was the big thing, and homogenized, by the numbers hair stuff didn't cut it.
They over saturated the market,and signed a bunch of no talent hacks to big contracts,just because they fit the bill with their look. It didn't help that MTV was only interested in playing videos they deemed worthy,strictly on appearance. The quality of the music was horrible,and by then it wAs trendy to hate them.
There's always a backlash, huh?
Glad you mentioned Motley Crues 94 record. It was great and definitely their best record musically and lyrically. Unfortunately, most of their fans were more into Vince Neils image than the actual music so shen he left, the fans were done with Motley as well. The reality is, Vince didn’t want to sing songs about actual life, he just wanted to sing about drinking & women which gets a bit old quickly. Corabi added such soul and grit that I really wished they changed the name of the band and I think they would have had a better chance.
The 1 genre of music that was prevalent in the bay area That gets overlooked because it never had a band that really Represented was thrash Metallica lifted That thrashed punk Staged diving Trip I think the only band back then was Suicidal tendencies That came in like that and didn't tweak what they were doing ,Your spot on With your opinion and this short film It was songwriting it was production and producers,Queensryche kept on going
This is the most accurate portrayal of the downfall of so called "hair metal"
When the internet started fans could see and read about all of the things that they had to wait for before like concerts or Hit Parader magazines. Going to concerts wasn't
a huge deal anymore. Bands like Soundgarden were no different musically but they wore jeans and Tshirts instead of spandex and makeup. Bands like Poison and
Faster Pussycat took the glam just a little too far. RUclips and MTV destroyed the scene.
The industry shares more credit than it is gtiven for its influence on the decline of glam metal. Once major industry forces like MTV withdrew support, glam metal bands struggled to maintain mainstream visibility and audience connections.
Even then, though faced with personnel issues and musical changes, bands like Poison and Def Leppard experienced commercial success. Despite a decline in industry support, some glam bands achieved sales comparable to renowned grunge acts like Alice In Chains and Soundgarden (Superunknown being the exception).
Even the much maligned Firehouse achieved not insignificant success, outperforming bands like Nirvana and Alice In Chains at the AMAs (1992) and even having a Billboard Hot 100 hit at #26 (which is higer than most of the hits Nirvana did have, excepting SLTS).
The story is much more complex than the myth pushed by the music industry, critics and fans would have you believe.
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Also, imagining that people who were into alt rock were going to embrace a band like Motley Crue is probably wishful thinking. Alt rock fans always were and have been actively hostile towards glam metal bands. All Motley Crue and other bands who went "alt lite" managed to do was alienate their fan base.
it burned out and faded away
2words.
Power Ballads.
I laugh when people say power ballads. If that was the case, then, the power ballad would have died along with the genre. On top of that, bands like Iron Maiden, Twisted Sister, Judas Priest, etc who were not power ballad bands also got the shaft by MTV and the labels. But let's get back to the Power Ballad. Monster Ballads, a disk of nothing but power ballads has sold over 2 million copies, alone. Power Ballads were big sellers that opened up the hard rock/metal genre to a wider audience. Power Ballads were also huge on the radio. Did the Power Ballad die in the 90s?
Bryan Adams - Everything I do I Do It For You
Pearl Jam - Oceans
Guns n Roses - November Rain
Aerosmith - Don't Wanna Miss A Thing
Goo Goo Dolls - Iris & Name
Firehouse - I Live My Life For You
Soul Asylum - Runaway Train
Bon Jovi - Always
Def Leppard - Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad
Van Halen - Can't Stop Loving You
The Cranberries - Linger
These are just a few of the many successful power ballads in the 90s. If power ballads killed the hairbands, why would the radio stations replace power ballads with more power ballads? On top of that, modern music is filled with power ballads, most influenced by and still using the same formula as the hairbands of the 80s. Power Ballads have absolutely nothing to do with the demise of the genre.
The Record Company's ruined it they promoted Grunge and Invented "Hair Metal" it was actually "Glam Metal" but Hair Metal makes the Music and musicians sound stupid !!
What happened to hair bands:
Motley Crue: Got stabbed by porn stars and drug dealers
Ratt: Ate by a actual rat
Poison: Changed their gender to male
Whitesnake: Now called Blacklizard
Warrant: Went to jail
Skid Row: Living on skid row
Bon Jovi: Ran out of ballads to write
Guns N Roses: Who the hell can deal with Axl? Even Metallica couldn't
I know this comment is late to the game. We Boomers and the front edge of Gen X became full on adults in the mid 1980's. Hair metal ran out of teenagers to cater to. Grade schoolers in the mid 1980's grew up and found their music the same way we found ours.
Never forget the tailing edge of the Boomers and first wave of Gen X found our music too. We killed soft rock, southern rock, and ushed in New Wave, the second British Invasion and Hair Metal too.
I think most of the bandwagon hair bands simply ran out of ideas. The better ones among them (Aerosmith, Van Halen, Def Leppard) managed to hold on, but in general there was a noticeable drop off in the quality of good original music from this particular genre post 1993. It was pretty clear when Motley Crue, Warrant, and others were trying to fit their brand of music into the norms of the day that they were doing something that wasn't in their wheelhouse. You're on the money when you suggest that none of it sounded authentic.
It became so watered down. There was still some good music coming out from the 80s rock bands, but so much of the stuff seemed to just be following the formula.
Most of the reasons people give for the fall of the hairbands don't add up. Just ask yourself some simple questions.
Was there still a hunger for these bands? You've already shown some bands that were having success (we'll come back to why in a bit). But add to that bands like Firehouse beating Nirvana and Alice In Chains for Best Hard Rock band. I would say there was certainly a hunger there.
Did the power ballad really kill this genre? I don't think so. Power ballads were great and sold tons of albums. Monster Ballads alone has sold over 2 million copies. Country Music in the 90s had just as many power ballads and still had success. To top it off, power ballads are still a big seller in modern music (much of it having some influence by the power ballads of hairbands).
If there was still a hunger and power ballads didn't kill it, then what did? Remember that there was no internet at the time. The only avenue people had to hear new music was radio and MTV. At the time, MTV was everything. The hairbands were doing fine right up until Beavis & Butthead came out. While Grunge entered in 1992, it really didn't catch on that well until Beavis and Butthead entered and became the most popular show MTV had ever done. Most of the show was spent criticizing hairbands and boosting grunge bands. You only had to turn it on for a minute to see a Danger Danger video with them yelling "this sucks" followed up by Janes Addiction with them yelling "this rocks". This type of repetitive thing brainwashed people into thinking hairnbands sucked and grunge was cool. At the same time this was going on, record labels started shelving new albums from the hairbands instead of releasing them, radio stations stopped playing them in favor of grunge, and they no longer had an outlet to reach their audiences. So everyone just thought it died.
Looking back now, it was probably the biggest mistake MTV could have made. A few things to note: first, because grunge sucked when it came out, it didn't last long before it died on its own without the help of a Beavis & Butthead. In fact, it really just hit its stride in 93 and was about dead by 98. Second, when MTV killed the hairbands and the image that went with them, it also didn't even make it a decade before it stopped playing music videos. Who wants to watch 4 boring guys who look like they walked out of Walmart jamming in a small room? Music videos were very boring after the hairband era and MTV still has not found its stride like it did back then.
I still haven't come back to why some hairbands were still successful during the grunge era. That's easy. MTV still played them, record labels did not shelf their albums, and radio stations still played them. People had access to them and good music will continue to do well if it's heard.
That brings us to now. Grunge has not aged well, even with the internet. However, now that the hairbands have a way to reach people, they are building new audiences. Many are selling out arenas and theaters again. It's a scene that never really died. It just lost any way of connecting with its market for a while. Will it ever return to its glory? Probably not. Record labels will not push it no matter how much people enjoy it. They are now looking for throw-away music that they can make a quick buck on and not have to invest in an image.
Groups that made it through the transition: Metallica, Ozzy, GNR, Help me out here...
There really weren't many. Aerosmith was one. KISS had to put the makeup back on to stay relevant. So many bands disappeared for a number of years, and then returned. Poison came out on the other side, but no one cares about new music from them. Same with Motley. They imploded, reformed, and have managed to remain big.
Those you listed, weren't actually hair bands.
@@AFloridaSon that's why they made it. I can't think of a hairband that made it. Sure wasn't Winger 😆
Bon Jovi
I think a lot of people got bored with the similar sounding "hair bands". From what I recall in the early 90's a lot of people were turning their attention to rap and country music. I didn't budge and continued listening to the heavy rock I loved since growing up with it in the 70's.
I initially like "Teen Spirit" when it came out but started disliking it because it got overplayed so much.
There were a lot of different things at play, for sure. Between the audience beginning to age out a bit (24 years old don't buy music at the same rate as 14 year olds), the music getting watered down with copycats and ballads, grunge giving us a stripped-down, heavier sound, and other genres picking up some of those older audience members, the hair bands music has nothing left.
You are correct that country music became huge in the 90s. The reason is that after the record industry crushed the hairbands, those producers and mix engineers started mixing and producing country music. Producers like Mutt Lang (Def Leppard, Bryan Adams, AC/DC, Foreigner) were now working with people like Shania Twain and even 90s pop artists such as Backstreet Boys and Brittney Spears which also became a success.
I would disagree that people got bored of the similar sound though. If you listen to 90s country or 90s pop that was being produced by the same engineers from the 80s, it was the same formulas with the same sound and people were still buying it. In fact, I know a lot of people who were into hairbands that were suddenly into 90s country because of the similar sound.
I think part of the reason country and pop quickly rose to the top in the '90s is because it was the music that was most similar to the hairbands that people were used to hearing on the radio. On top of that, when the label actually released a hairband album in the 90s, it was generally successful. The video already shows this with a few bands. And after all, Firehouse beat Alice in Chains & Nirvana for Best Hard Rock band in '92. These things don't happen if people are bored.
I think the rise of hip hop in the early 90s had a big part of taking away market shares from metal was significant too
Absolutely this! A lot of these “what killed hair metal” documentaries tend not to acknowledge forces from outside of the rock and metal sphere in general. Guitar based music had started to decline in popularity overall during the 90s, while hip hop and Gangsta Rap (at least at this time) were on the rise. I’ve even read an interview with Axl where he mentioned that what GnR and other rock bands at the time were singing about was “bullshit” compared to what groups like NWA were putting out.
@@charlieogre4537 Yep, you could see big changes in pop culture in the 90s. Unlike the 70s and 80s, where rock was the dominant force, the 90s saw a lot of diversity, and anything could become popular. While kids used to emulate rockstars, in the 90s many of them idolized rappers instead.
Several things......and Grunge turned into the same mess.
Too many Power Ballads, nothing to keep listeners interested. Plus the albums were starting to get crappier and crappier.
Only problem, some bands were let go that should not have disappeared. Warrant is good example. After Dog Eat Dog they released Ultraphobic. It was actually their best album, but had no support.
Eventually Grunge did the same thing. They went from underground legends, to strange ballad groups.
Exactly what I came to say... ballads killed hair metal. One here and there was fine but after a few of them went really big, that's all the labels wanted. They started signing cheap Air Supply knock--offs and telling them to grow their hair and wear spandex.
In the summer of 91 MTV was playing "blocks" of three- three songs by Poison, Motley Crue, Warrant, etc. In between they started playing Alice In Chains "Man in the Box" and it seriously took off. In one week it seemed like they were playing it every hour. The Poison and Warrant albums at the time were reaching the end of their hit cycles, so the new singles were the afterthoughts. They were also pushing cookie cutter bands like Trixter and Firehouse and endless Winger. Skid Row was a hair band I guess, but they released "Monkey Business" and "Slave to the Grind" in early summer-- not hair metal at all.
Then Metallica released the Black Album in August and GnR released UYI in September. From that point everything else was gone. No Poison, Warrant, Firehouse, or Trixter. Nobody heard of Nirvana. until October or November.
The hair bands were gone months before Nirvana hit. Sure, they were the nail in the coffin, but they weren't the first Seattle band to break the rotation (I believe that would be Alice in Chains) and we were all jumping on the "new" Metallica bandwagon and GNR (never a hairband IMO) and it was all we listened to for months before Nirvana. I don't remember Nirvana becoming really huge until the spring of 92.
Then Metallica threw the dart at the Kip Winger poster and it was all over. So in my opinion, Metallica and GNR killed hair metal just as much as Nirvana and grunge.
The only alternative rock band I got into was Smashing Pumpkins. Besides them I take glam metal any day.
I got into "hair metal" (hard rock) during the tail end of the era. Around 1990 is when I became a rock chick. I got to witness the evolution from that style of music to "Grunge" (alternative rock). I'm a Gen X'er to my core. I got sick of all the folk and soft rock that started to seep unto MTV in the mid-90s, so I followed the guitars.
I migrated to wherever the rock went. The Offspring and Green Day? Pop-Punk, but it sounded cool, so I became a fan. Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Alice In Chains? I'm a fan to this very day and am still saddened by Chris Cornell's passing. Danzig and Type O Negative? I was a goth, so hell yes! Stone Temple Pilots and Bush? Abso-friggin'-lutely! KoRn, Linkin Park, Slipknot? You bet your ass! Creed? Yep! Limp Bizkit! HELL NO!!! I just followed the rock, and am still doing it now.
Nikki Sixx said it around '90 or '91. He said music was reaching a cookie-cutter era where everybody looked the same and everybody sounded the same. He said somebody needed to do something and there needed to be a musical revolution. Well, he called it because shortly after that, Nirvana burst onto the scene. Very quickly, my favorite artists started to be fazed out, and I had to find some "new favorites".
A lot of us waited for the reunion and revival shows that eventually started to crop up here and there. But others like me went where the rock went, and discovered other bands. I'm glad to have discovered bands like Three Days Grace (The Adam Gontier years), Breaking Benjamin, Seether, Evanescence, and so many others. Some bands I stay away from, but others I gravitate to if it sounds good.
Sounds a lot like me. If the music is good, I'm all in. 🙂
i think it was a little bit of everything you said that contributed to the demise of hair metal
cds.. new technology of recording and selling music brings new genres
Very nice. Cool info in here.
Curt Cobain...
In my honest opinion and I do think this is true for sure a few factors led to glam metal falling off the perch and being replaced by grunge is that 1. The genre had gone soft, cookie cutter and repetitive so that certainly didn’t help. 2. People were getting bored if the formula and were wanting new music and 3. The music climate was shifting it might not have been obvious right away but cone 1989 nirvana had put out bleach bands like L7 were getting noticed and were putting out there albums and so on so I guess to big record companies this seemed like the most logical thing to do is simply go on to other bands with different music and that’s just what they dud a couple of years later. But of course just my opinion I could be wrong tho
Hip-Hop Rapp Music sales were moving up! The Drug Cartels had to clean there💲 somewhere! Rock & Roll was getting older not as lucrative? The young and upcoming Rapp Hip Hop scene was growing. More 💲 Bigger shows! Bigger shows Bigger Sales 💲comes back Clean revenue! That's what happen to Rock & Roll? Just a theory? But as all things in life. It's always about the money 🤑
Detonator came out in 1990.
It’s a trope in music that a genre has a time period of dominance and then they decline. It’s the way the cookie crumbles.
Guns n Roses helped kill of the hair-band trend.. then heavy metal bands like Pantera killed that and grunge trend.
The record companies did. By the late 80's any band with all blondes or all black haired puffed up hair had a record deal it became all about the look and the music sucked.
That's the way it always goes, huh?
I loved Revenge.
My first thought was oh geez what are they doing now but when I heard it I was surprised how good it was.
The record companies also bear some responsibility. Studio time is a lot cheaper for a group of junkie kids that just bank out three raw chords and don't even play solos than for real musicians who actually need sound engineers to cut their album. The record companies sold the public on an inferior product in "grunge" Think about it, no one ever said Kurt Cobain was a great guitarist, or that the weeeny Eddie Vetter was a great vocalist...except maybe someone from a record company
Personally I like both of genres and I don't really care for new rock music
I totally understand that.
For starters, without warning MTV cancels Headbangers'Ball.This gave the false illusion nobody was interested in any kind of metal anymore. Secondly managers and record companies telling their bands power ballads are what the people really want. Which was a big lie in an attempt to try to expand the female audience. Radio, and music video channels have been lying to the public since forever by telling them something was popular when it really wasn't because record companies pay them to lie to boost sales.
Just Imagine how many more millions and millions of albums KISS could have sold in the beginning if they were on an all powerful record label instead of the small time struggling Casablanca. But I digress.
And of course too many bands caused it to collapse under its own weight. A person can only afford to buy a certain amount of albums and a limited amount of concert tickets.
Having been part of that strange, late gen x generation that lived through 80s metal into "Grunge"... (I hate that term cuz it's dumb)... It's just stripped down hard rock music played by guys who said "I aint wearing lip stick and hairspray" lol. But at any rate, I wouldn't say the seattle bands killed 80s bands... What happened is every band that came out in the second half of the 80s were just trying to duplicate the first couple of 80s bands that hit... PARTICULARLY Motley Crue... They busted the scene wide open and EXPLODED with the release of 1985's "Home Sweet Home"... And after that, just about every band that came out were a new copycat, more watered down version of Motley than the band before them... Poison, Warrant, Faster Pussycat, Nelson, Enuff Z'nuff... UNTIL Guns N Roses finally came along... And then everyone started trying to copy them lol.. Dangerous Toys, Bang Tango, Etc. It just became like every band was made with the same cookie cutter, and they just got cheesier and cheesier, and faker and faker, until finally people were like SCREW THIS... And the Seattle bands, Being Rock fans, And feeling the same way... Stripped it all back down to the way it was in the 70s. "Grunge" was basically just 70s hard rock mixed with a dose of Punk and a splash of Pop. Not that those bands weren't great... because the first 8 or 10 were... they were all very original, and all different from each other.. But then, the cycle repeated... Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Alice in chains... became Smashing pumpkins, Ween, Blur, etc. Thankfully... that cycle didn't take as long to burn out.
The cycle always repeats, huh?
@@RockNewsDesk Sure seems like it... It happened in the 60s, Happened in the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, and it's just went on and on. Probably will until AI is making all the music lol.
Grunge could barely bother with the guitar the way 70s and 80s bands did, please. It became really BORING when they "stripped down" musically as well. Deep Purple's "Burn" from '74 has NOTHING to do with the 90s bands.
After 85 in seemed rap dominated everything
It was just time for all the tongue and cheek rock to end! Hello Pantera! But one helluva fucking decade the 80s was!
So much fun!
@@RockNewsDesk No doubt about it!
As this says, grunge didn't kill it all alone.... but they were the asteroid to the dinosaurs, dinosaurs were dying long before the asteroid hit, it just finished the job. A lot of the bands that started in the early 80's had some great albums or ultra catchy songs, at the end it was all just party music and ballads. I was a huge trash metal fan in the 80's, although it was only the big 3 for me, I never liked Megadeath for the same reason I never liked Rush, nobody could sing in either band, Rush were masters of instruments and Mustane was a great guitarist, I could never get past his voice. Back to my main point if you listen to the big trash metal bands, all of their content Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax could have all been grunge acts if they came out 5 years later, well maybe not Slayer. Metallica were huge grunge fans and wrote Enter Sandman after hearing Louder than Love and certain Badmotorfinger songs, because they were friends of Soundgarden. Either way I hated that whole hair scene which for me started with Theater of Pain, just lazy party music.
I really think it was all about fasion and changing aethetics. The clothes they wear were no longer deemed cool and the clothes these other guys had were cooler.
The whole copy cat bands thing is just as applicable to grunge. How the hell does a band like Bush have a millon songs on radio? Grunge gave us post-grunge which is so much worse than anything from the 80s.
Me then i love firehouse, poison,, white lion, mr.Big.
I hated motley crue.
I ended in a nu metal band later on In life. 😮
There isnt but one thing that killed hair metal and that was MTV. Lots of good hair metal still being made but MTV wouldn't show it. MTV controlled music and they moved on to the next money maker!
Grunge did kill it. Don't focus on individual bands like Rats, etc. Overnight....EVERYONE was wearing flannel and brooding over their lives, unbathed, and generally depressing. It's not like grunge was better.....that shit thankfully died a smack-filled death, people want music as an escape, not to go further into the gutter. Now look.....the 80s are back and stood the test of time. You won't be seeing too many grunge tributes.....you WILL see dozens of 80s ones.
Rap and grunge killed it
Vince is not the great singer that John Corabi is, Corabi still has it, Vince CANT AND COULD NEVER be that caliber of singer. Were those old Crue songs good? YES. But that album with John, BLEW AWAY ANYTHING they could do with Vince, that was a DAMN HEAVY album!
I love that Corabi album.
I don't think it is any of that. it is more sinister, Clinton passed legislation that made all radio station become just a handful
of people who never like that kind of music. We did not have DJ's that promoted local bands any more.
Nice perspectives I was very entertaining
Hair bands music died because it was the same thing in every band. Ballads or party' songs. That's and dudes fighting to be prettier than their female fans.
What killed Grunge?
There's a joke there I'm not going to make.
Same as killed Hair metal over saturated with all sounding the same, same look, same old
Rap and pop tart artists
The bullet that killed the man who made it popular.
Pierce always liked to toot his own horn, didn't he?
I mean, it's not like Ratt's schtick was entirely original either..
Exactly. It's funny how he feels like it was Motley, Ratt, and everyone trying to be them.
What killed the Hair Bands was the PC and MP3's, everyone started listening to their music over PC speakers and yea high production music like Def Leppard is not going to sound good that way.
So they turned to trash music to go along with their trash sound system.
Then later hip hop killed grunge
Pop Punk and Nu Metal and Hip Hop 4 sure
@@gothiccowboy95 hip hop out lasted both of them
@@kevinmcc3147 indeed it did
I blame grunge. More specifically Nirvana. 😜
I think there was much more to it than that, but I get it.
Love the music, hate the look and style of hair metal.
grundge did not kill hair bands the hair bands killed themself but it has made a come back
Grunge became important because people didnt want any gimmick or fake bands .. so Yes the component of "motley" copies is there . . but at the end what killed glam is that people wanted something more raw, closer to a regular look . .instead of what Poison, Warrant, Motley(also) were. . some atempts to it are Slaughter, trixter, winger,steelheart . . bands that were appealing to the women to keep sales up .. but then record companies started to prefer the grunge or as they were called then "alternative" music . . with all the bands from Seattle . . from my stand point Grunge did kill glam metal for this reason. .. but people respected "icons" like Van Halen, Kiss, Aerosmith, GNR, even Metallica . . those survived the grunge hit .. but the ones with "trans-teatrical look" did not
What killed it was just like every other genre
The record company’s did they wanted every penny out of every band
Happens in every new type of music who cares we have all the good music 50s 60s 70s 80s and the whiney rock of the nineties can’t reproduce any of it now just the way it goes who cares we have all the good music
Twisted Sister got watered down/
MOTLEY CRUE are nothing to do with actual METAL!!!!
Slaughter it was the band Slaughter that killed the hair bands 😂
In reality it was the formula for new bands....
Release the heavy song first "Youth gone wild" or "Up all night"
Followed by the ballad " I remember you" or "fly to the angels"
It got stale
Ha!
Grunge did. And thank fuck. Rap to a lesser extent
Guns is playing Tuesday Aug 15th in New Jersey Meadowlands arena where the giants n jets play football so Tix aren't selling you can go for 36.50 or 59.50 with bad sales this tour looks like guns needs all the help they can get
Oh wow. I just saw Metallica and Pantera there. Tickets were very expensive.
Rock went from kicking your ass to being candy-assed. Sure, rock and roll could never be right-wing, but Nirvana was cry-baby rock... sorta the first "woke" band to get trendy
HAIR METAL RULES , JUDE ROCK SUX 🕎🕎🕎