In a new interview with Billboard, CINDERELLA frontman Tom Keifer cited such acts as THE ROLLING STONES, LED ZEPPELIN, HUMBLE PIE and Janis Joplin as influences for his songwriting. "I don't consider my music metal — and the 'hair metal' term is just ridiculous," he said. "I like the term 'hard rock.' As I teenager, I got into Muddy Waters, Son House and Johnny Winter, and learned the roots and the blues. It always has been a part of my music. So I see myself as a blues-inspired or American roots-inspired hard-rock musician." Back in 2015, Keifer weighed in on why bands like BON JOVI, MÖTLEY CRÜE, RATT and CINDERELLA were all lumped into the "hair metal" genre despite the fact that their music was at times sounded drastically different from each other. "I think that every decade has a visual look to it and a style," he told Sleaze Roxx. "The '60s had a look to it. The '70s had a look to it. The '80s got lumped together because of MTV, because it was so in-your-face, 24/7. The visual and the image became as important as the music. And not that it wasn't in the '60s or the '70s — the look of the '70s is what inspired us. The more glam-edged kinda rock like AEROSMITH, THE [ROLLING] STONES, Janis Joplin, Rod Stewart is what I came up on, and I think in the '80s, we were all trying to take that to another level. The fact that we had the MTV camera in our face 24/7 made everyone really take it over the top [laughs], and not just in rock. The '80s were a very colorful time, even in the pop world with people like Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, Boy George; everything was just so over-the-top in terms of imagery in the '80s and I think a lot of it had to do with the camera we had in front of our face, 24/7. There was a lot of emphasis on image, but at the end of the day, a lot of the artists from that era had a unique sound. DEF LEPPARD sounds very different from CINDERELLA, sounds very different from POISON, sounds very different from GUNS N' ROSES and TESLA. Everyone had a unique sound. At the end of the day, for me, I think the music world would be a much better place if people listened to music with their ears, and not their eyes. I think that all too many times, too much focus is placed on what people look like. Close your eyes and just listen to music and judge it by that, is where I'm with it." Keifer's second solo album, "Rise", was released on September 13 via Cleopatra Records.
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