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Glam metal)
Hair metal is a type of heavy metal music that arose in the mid/late 1970s in the United States and was a strong force in popular music throughout most of the 1980s. Pejorative terms for such music include poodle rock, due to the long, teased, bushy hair of many performers, or cock rock, due to frequent fixation on sexual content.
Despite its wide popularity, many people considered hair metal humorous or unimportant due to the perception that most hair metal bands seemed more focused on flashy make-up, clothing, lyrics and stage shows than their music, often considered a watered down combination of metal and glam rock, anthemic pop-metal mixed with the occasional power ballad, inspired by bands of the 1970s like Kansas, Boston, and Foreigner.
Heavy metal languished in obscurity during most of the 70s. A few bands maintained large followings, like Kiss and Aerosmith, and there were occasional mainstream hits, like Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper". Music critics overwhelmingly hated the genre, though, and listeners generally avoided it because of its strangeness. It left its mark on hard progressive bands like Chicago and flamboyant glam rock performers like Gary Glitter.
Even while heavy metal spawned underground varieties like thrash and black metal, a group of musicians were formulating what became known as hair metal. They were known for long hair and feminized use of make-up, clothing and jewelry; nevertheless, their songs were defiantly macho, focusing on girls, drinking and violence. Within a few years, hair metal dominated radio; bands like Def Leppard, Ratt and Extreme rose to fame, then generally collapsed under pressure. Many were one-hit wonders.
1987 saw the release of Appetite for Destruction by Guns n' Roses, which skyrocketed to the top of the charts. Though only debatably hair metal, Guns n' Roses, led by controversial frontman Axl Rose, fit in well, wearing long hair and playing pop-metal. In contrast to other bands, they were not feminized in the slightest and incorporated influences from genres like thrash metal.
By the early 1990s, hair metal bands were increasingly formulaic one-hit wonders. In 1991, the massive popularity of alternative rock by Alice In Chains, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam led to a decline in hair metal's popularity.
A few hair metal bands, perhaps most notably Bon Jovi who are often regarded as the form's progenitors, have managed to stay commercially viable throughout the 1990s.
In recent years, certain bands associated (perhaps loosely) with punk rock have scored hits with tracks that seem to evoke the anthemic hair-metal sound, such as the Offspring's Gone Away (1997) and AFI's Girl's Not Grey (2003). It is hard to say whether these tracks are intended as sincere homage or as an ironic reference. The Darkness has attempted to revive the hair metal style.
List of hair metal bands
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