Uncle Tom’s Cabin?...I’m surprised ‘Unskinny Bop’ didn’t make your top Poison pick...corn me up!
Metal never had a larger audience until hair metal. Plain and simple. People got sick of Grunge quicker than they did Hair Metal. Hair metal filled a void. Most 60s and 70s acts were on the decline, or were "owned" by the baby boomer generation. New wave had declined by that time. There was "serious" rock by Springsteen, U2, et al, but that again tended to be more serious and less fun. Punk/alternative had all the posturing about credibility of the listener. If you were a young kid trying to get into that music someone who already listened to it would be as likely to sneer at you as welcome a new fan.
Hair metal had a rock image. Beyond the power ballads those bands did have up tempo material, though it seems those songs were never hits on the level of the ballads. And there wasn't the self-conciousness of punk-alternative. They were just bands trying to make it big, sell tickets and records, make good music. I don't recall Elvis or The Beatlessneering at potential fans the way punk/alternative always did. Different time, more of a generational thing, but back then it was "Don't Knock The Rock", just people trying to have a good time. Listening to the younger people with their uninformed opinions about the stereotype of 1980s Rock n Roll makes me realize how dumb I must have sounded to my uncles when I was a kid. Not all music needs to be making some deep musical statement or profound lyric commentary to be good. A lot of these bands had a very fruitful career and made a pretty penny, became famous and can still tour and remain viable to a lot of people. "Hair metal" has contributed profoundly in the world of music, more so than "Grunge" (where is that now and who can name all the members of "Pearl jam" off the top of their heads or "Alice In Pain's" for that matter?). And to a lot of people "Hair Metal" is great, fun, rocking, chicks loved it and it was great going to concerts when a bunch of chicks are going also! I WILL go as far as saying if you want to classify a band that actually have hair as Hair metal, you might as well include Led Zeppelin, KISS, Aerosmith, or any band from the 70's cause they ALL had long hair and they ALL wrote catchy memorable songs. You can talk about the derivativeness of all the 2nd-tier hair bands, but at least all those guys could play. It was still cool to be in a rock band and be really awesome at your instrument, and 25 years later, I'm still waiting for that to be acceptable again. It was fun and mindless, and allowed a lot of disaffected suburban kids to work out some aggression in a reasonably safe manner. It didn't hurt that it was metal that women liked.
I'd call Van Halen a protoypical hair metal band; in many ways, they created the template for every other band that followed them down the Sunset Strip.
I never considered Guns n Roses hair metal. They were influenced more by the Stones and Aerosmith than Van Halen and glam rock. They were drunks and junkies who actually led the life they claimed to. (Until they got huge, at which point they were gluttons of excess, again, like the Stones and Aerosmith in their heydays). Even a band like Metallica didn't really get mainstream popularity until they softened things up on the Black Album and girls started buying it & going to show. The model was clearly to make albums like Aerosmith, KISS, or Van Halen.
Even when Mötley Crüe and W.A.S.P. attempted more ambitious projects in the 90's, they paled in comparison to what came before. Generation Swine was a disaster. The Crimson Idol is good, but it is essentially a retread of Quadrophenia and The Wall. In other words, pointless for most.
A lot of hair metal bands had plenty of solid songs about things other than girls, booze, & partying. Hell even Warrant had Uncle Tom's Cabin which is a great song in any genre. It's certainly not Cherry Pie though they're on the same album. W.A.S.P. was pretty frickin' far from "hair metal" Iron Maiden & The Scorpions wore plenty of spandex too. And man the girls loved sexy time with some Leppard and Poison et al. Good times,good times. I loved it then, love it now, and couldn't care less what elitest snobs think of it.
