Who are the Big 4 of Hair Metal?

The paradox of “hair metal” is that anyone who claims to be a fan of this subgenre knows it’s not real.

It’s a catch-all term for the pop-tinged hard rock that dominated the Sunset Strip and radio airwaves in the ’80s. Critics of this brighter, frothy brand of “metal” dismissed bands for caring more about their big hairdos and silly clothes than their music – hence “hair metal” became a popular pejorative term after the scene’s drastic decline in the ’90s.

The problem with “hair metal” is that it reduces a decade’s worth of bands to a pejorative two-word label. Critics have wrongly lumped together Van Halen, Motley Crue, WASP, Queensryche, The Cult, Extreme, Guns N’ Roses, Aerosmith, and numerous other bands, even though they all had unique interpretations of contemporary hard rock.

Whether you accept or reject the label “hair metal,” there’s no denying that it has found its footing in the pop culture vocabulary. And just as thrash metal had its Big 4, this subgenre had its tentpole bands that defined a movement. Read on to learn about the Big 4 of hair metal.

Mötley Crüe

Hair metal, glam metal, pop metal – whatever you want to call it, Motley Crue is the rock on which an entire subgenre was built. Their debut album Too fast for love presented a combative mixture of metal, punk and bubblegum pop that was brimming with youthful naivety and unabashed meanness. Their second album, Scream at the devilmade them stars and set the template for the rest of the decade with its mammoth hooks, metallic riffs and theatrical, slightly occult aesthetic. As the hard rock scene of the 80s became more and more cartoonish, so did Motley Crue and Theatre of Pain And Girls, girls, girls border on self-parody with their hedonistic party metal anthems and pretty boy attitude. After Nikki Sixx’s near fatal overdose (they even perfected the art of rock’n’roll excess), Motley Crue sobered up and crowned their ten-year run of success with the chart-topper Dr. Feel goodwhose outstanding singles “Kickstart My Heart” and the title track are not only among their best works, but are also highlights of the hair metal genre.

Def Leppard

Def Leppard began their career as hard rockers of the new wave of British heavy metal, but their popularity increased tenfold when they indulged their pop instincts on their diamond-certified third album. Pyromania. Along with producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange, they transformed songs like “Rock of Ages” and “Photograph” into stadium-sized anthems full of soaring vocal harmonies and flashy guitar heroics. Just when it seemed they couldn’t get any bigger (and after an accident in which drummer Rick Allen lost his left arm), Def Leppard rebounded with hysteriaanother diamond sensation who spawned six Top 20 hits (including the chart-topping ballad “Love Bites”) and became a hard rock thriller. Def Leppard’s emphasis on iron-clad songwriting and superb musicianship, as well as their incorporation of musical elements outside of hard rock, made them one of the biggest and up-and-coming bands of the hair metal era.

Bon Jovi

No band brought “pop” to pop metal like Bon Jovi. After their first two albums failed to do well commercially, they joined forces with producer Bruce Fairbairn and songwriter Desmond Child and experienced a real breakthrough in 1986 with the mega-selling success of their career. SLipsticky when wetwhich produced a triptych of generation-defining hits, including “Livin’ on a Prayer,” “You Give Love a Bad Name,” and “Wanted Dead or Alive.” Bon Jovi was never famous again after that, and capitalized on his momentum in 1988 with New Jersey (which spawned five top 10 hits, a record among hard rock albums) and refined their sound on a string of platinum and multi-platinum albums throughout the ’90s and 2000s. Jon Bon Jovi’s good looks and vocal dynamics, Richie Sambora’s raw blues guitar riffs and ear for pop hooks cemented Bon Jovi’s status as one of the biggest and most consistently successful bands of the hair metal generation.

Poison

If someone unfamiliar with hair metal were asked to describe one of their bands, that imaginary group would probably look exactly like Poison. The quartet from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, embodied the genre’s garish excesses with their debut album. Look what the cat broughtwhose cover shows all four band members with makeup that would make beauty queens blush. Poison never claimed to be a band of virtuosos, but the songs on Look what the cat brought and his follow-up album, Open up and say…Ahh!embody the young, silly, carefree attitude of the hair metal era. “Talk Dirty to Me”, “Nothin’ but a Good Time” and the 1990s Flesh and blood Cut “Unskinny Bop” are classic party metal singles, while chart-topping “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” is arguably the quintessential hair metal ballad. And we can’t stress this enough: just look at the hairand those Clothing.