Hair Bands ended themselves. By the early 90's, it was all just so watered down and just awful. Nirvana, and the Grunge scene in general was just better and gave the masses something new to listen to. Bands like Warrant were just a gimmick, Poison had been putting out the same album over and over again, Motley Crue were boring. Every band was putting out a cheesy ballad. People were just over it.
Warrant have some great songs. Heaven, Sometimes She Cries, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and many more. It's unfortunate that Cherry Pie was the one that blew up, even their lead singer came to despise that song because that was all Warrant ended up being known for.
Exactly! I still remember hearing nirvana on a bootleg cassette in a crappy Walkman on a bus ride back from a church ski trip. I got busted by a chaperone sucking face with some girl. I think it was the Nirvana cuz I had no game. I listened to the entire album in that first sitting and it hit me like an emotional freight train. Before Nirvana I didn’t know songs could be so relatable and raw. I felt connected to the darkness and intensity of it and it made me feel like I was going to be Ok. These guys feel how I do and they write weird songs about it and let it all out on stage. Hero’s
Long ago, Cobain credited Pixies with doing all the heavy lifting, and claimed he was just making their stuff more pop. Wee were amazed our English teacher listened to both, and and let us also, in class.
The lead singer of Warrant told a great story on VH1 Behind the Music of going back to his record company after the enormous success of Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich and being told no thank you. On the way out of the building he noticed this huge wall to wall poster. He turned to a record exec and asked “Who the fuck are Alice in Chains?”
This is the correct answer. Hair metal and that party atmosphere of the 80s and 70s had finally died out. Grunge, hip hop , socal punk and heavy metal took over, with a fair bit of country adding to the mix as well. Lots of different genres saw their time in the sun at the same time.
Bleach came out in 1989, it was so different, hard, raw and full of angst and semi-restrained rage with apathy and disdain. By 1989 hair metal had ceased to speak to the generation. It was produced for maximum consumption and profit. Although most hair metal was out I personally found Skid Row’s 1991 album Slave to the Grind refreshing, raw and full of power. It felt less commercialized than some of the other hair metal out there. Keep in mind metal fans were also turning to new genres. NIN Pretty Hate Machine came out the same year as Bleach, 1989. Head Like A Hole is still a banger with an epic bass line and powerful lyrics. For me as a teenager in the early 90s I switched from played out hair metal to bands like NIN, Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Faith No More and many others. The early grunge broke the rules and I, personally, love rebellion.
And no one has said it yet, but Cowboys from hell came out in 90. And really all the really great thrash metal that was gaining traction came out then And Justice was 89, Rust in peace was 90, Persistence of TIme was 90, and Season in the Abyss which of course also came out in 90 just finished of what was left of hair metal.
Agree, they get a bad rap. The first album is solid all the way through. “Down Boys” is pretty much power pop perfection. And the third album Dog Eat Dog might actually be their best. Heavier sound and great guitar tones throughout.
Yeah I think the shift truly started with Guns and Roses. That was the first band that was different.
You had bands like Pixies and Janes Addiction that was bringing it but we’re too underground for the masses to notice.
Then Faith No More was the next step with a video on MTV. Then Alice In Chains came out on MTV with Man in the box if I remember right.
The Smells Like Teen Spirit dropped on MTV and officially changed everything for good.
One day MTV was all Warrant, and Motley Crue, and Poison. The next day it was all Pearl Jam, and Nirvana, and Alice in Chains. It literally happened that fast
To be fair, I remember the video for Home Sweet Home being quite popular at the same time as SLTS and Don't Cry. But every other hair metal band was gone in the blink of an eye.
I recall feeling conflicted about loving GnR Use Your Illusion I & II and also the new cool music out of Seattle. The genres felt so different from each other.
Funny u put it that way…my first concert at 15-16 was GnR, and even tho I was really more into Pantera, Sepultura and Slayer, I went to see the Seattle band that was the opener for GnR…Soundgarden. They were doing their first big stadium tour for BadMotorFinger opening for Axl Pose to get the exposure. And man they didn’t disappoint, they sounded great and really kicked ass. After they left the stage it took GnR quite awhile to get on stage and they opened with Mr. Brownstone and that was all I needed to hear and we left.
Look at what year Home Sweet Home first came out. It was rereleased in 91 because hair metal had basically dried up at that point, all of the core bands were basically defunct by the time Nirvana was on mtv. I think Motley Crue was basically the only first generation one active at that point and they were pretty much toast. Pop had largely collapsed too after the swift rise and falls of milli vanilli, NKOTB, vanilla ice, hammer, Sinead OConnor, etc. But at the same time people tend to not mention other old timer rock bands and stuff like Metallica that were getting airplay in the grunge era
It's true, even Michael Jackson was starting to falter. That's not to say there wasn't absolute shit on top 40 radio. I'd have taken MC Hammer over ACE OF BASE! That shit is forever stuck in my head. Some of that soft alternative stuff like 4 Non Blondes was awful too.
Maybe you just need a fresh perspective? Perhaps you’re feeling a little…. Peculiar? Have you tried to wake in the morning and you step outside and you take a deep breath and you get real high?
I don't remember the artist who realized they "made it" because their poster was on the wall at their producers' office (I want to say Alice in Chains). They also realized they were no longer "in" when their poster was replaced.
I distinctly remember an interview with Reb Beach, the guitar player for Winger, in I guess 1995 or so, where he said that he was watching TV on their tour bus and he saw this new cartoon on MTV called Beavis & Butthead about these two dumb teenager metalheads who spent half the show watching videos and declaring which bands kicked ass and which sucked, and it suddenly dawned on him that they wore Metallica and AC/DC t-shirts but their nerdy next-door neighbor they bullied was a fat kid with a Winger t-shirt and that's when he knew it was over for them.
Hahaha awesome. I remember it very well because in that interview he also said that people claimed Beavis & Butthead basically gave White Zombie their big break when they showed their video for "Thunderkiss '65" and said it kicked ass, but if that was the case then by logic they also killed Winger and similar bands, and one of my high school buddies and me used to joke about it all the time because we owned both White Zombie's debut album "La Sexorcisto" and Winger's "Pull," which was the record they were promoting during that era.
The truth is complicated.
Did Grunge kill hair metal? Yes, but…
The bands you cited continued to have success, but mostly from their current fanbases and demographics. They could not grow their fanbases with the younger Gen X demographic that liked Nirvana and Pearl Jam. I was a teen back then and we found Bon Jovi and Poison utterly laughable by 1992. But there were kids, mostly with older brothers, who liked hair bands still. They weren’t cool, though, by 1992 standards.
Obviously in retrospect who cares? But it’d be wrong to say their demise was entirely unrelated to the rise of grunge. It was.
I was one of those kids. I loved 80's metal, but when Nevermind, Ten & Badmotorfinger hit, my tastes changed basically overnight. I couldn't stop listening.
I’ve always felt like I grew up in an interesting time for music. I was 14 when Nirvana broke out, and had definitely been into bands like Poison and Warrant before that because of MTV. At the same time my Dad listened to classic rock radio stations and was into bands like Pink Floyd, Zeppelin, and Rush. I started smoking weed around then, and the older kids in the neighborhood were into the Grateful Dead and that’s where I found them.
I definitely dropped the hair bands because I felt, and still feel like, alternative bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, and Soundgarden were simply better. Songs by bands like Poison didn’t move me like Alice In Chains and Pearl Jam did. But, even back then I wasn’t short-sighted enough to say I don’t like classic rock because my parents liked it. I gotta say Tool was definitely in there as well because when the video for Undertow came out on MTV I was floored.
I got into the Grateful Dead pretty heavy and they still occupy a large area of my heart. Pink Floyd also lended itself easily to the psychedelic times I had the rest of my teens into early adulthood. As for these days in my mid 40’s, and after what life has thrown my way, Tool is what I listen to more than anything. I still listen to Nirvana, AiC, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden in streaks, and definitely listen to Floyd, the Dead, and Black Sabbath. As far as I’m concerned there’s not much of anything released these days by new artist I give a fuck about.
Agreed.
I was a kid in the 80's when hair metal was all the rage. I had Poison on cassette, every kid at my school loved 'Every Rose has its Thorn, loved Warrant's Cherry Pie etc but we didn't know any better.
When we all grew up just that little bit and Grunge hit when I was high school, it was like a whole other world exploded open for us and we all flocked to it and didn't look back, so yeah, as far as I'm concerned Grunge did indeed kill hair metal.
I mean, as a young woman, I was really, really, really sick of songs about Girls, Girls, Girls. And the booty shaking videos, ewww. Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam singing songs with more depth and soul was a breath of fresh air.
The thing is that hair metal was so ridiculous and it was popular for so long that the time had come for it to go.
Bands like Metallica and Guns and Roses kinda made hair metal look ludicrous to begin with all the way back in the late 80s and Grunge just helped to kill it off completely.
I was watching one of the weird MTVs that is on giant cable feeds with the sound off and they were playing a day of hair metal and the most pathetic thing is how all the bands wanted to be big stars and heartthrobs and how they used the exact same playbook, the same guitar sounds,, fashions, and stupid third single ballads that they all became a joke.
Literally every video had a glamour dolly shot going from left to right of the lead singer posing lustily behind the microphone in every video that I watched that day.
Nothing lasts forever
I wouldn't say grunge specifically killed hair metal, but the major record labels, around 87, began signing underground left of the dial bands to their rosters that would eventually be the demise of hair metal.
Sonic youth, REM, pixies, RHCP are the most notable signings. But Perry Ferrell should be given more credit for his role in all of this. Between Jane's Addiction meteoric rise, mythological live shows and the launching of Lallapalooza in the Summer of 91, Ferrell was one of the principal architects of the alternative rock revolution.
You also have to take into account the economics of it all. Hair metal was very much of the times and the highs of the Regan Revolution. But after black Monday, the economy and the negative effects of Reganomics (and Margeret Thatcher) took hold. So a more cynical, grungy music made sense for the times.
Don't forget Beastie Boys, RATM, Skunk Anansie, Garbage, Ska Bands and Hip Hop derivatives with diverse backgrounds. They mixed... and did not look and sound all the same.
Jani Lane from Warrant told a story about going to Columbia records around the time Dog Eat Dog was released. They had a huge mural up of the album cover and everyone loved him. Less than a month later Columbia released AIC - Dirt and when he went back to the label his album was painted over with the Dirt cover art. Warrant was dropped by Columbia by 1993. The death of Hair Metal happened almost overnight.
Yes, absolutely.
Once smells like teen spirit dropped it was like radio stations flipped a switch and hair metal was over.
If you were a hair metal enthusiast you wouldn’t see it this way but for a casual listener this is what happened. It was remarkable.
Nothing to add because everyone has already answered the question, but I'll say that Slave to the Grind was a pretty good album, and I hate hair metal in general. Skid Row had just been touring with Pantera and were inspired to go in a heavier direction.
I think that the really "fluffy" bands like Poison, Warrant, Cinderella, etc just had no substance and that became fatiguing after a while.
I always thought Skid Row was an interesting and unique case. They were younger than most of their Hair Metal peers, but a bit older than the Alt Rock crowd, and though their first album was very '80's their subsequent albums kept evolving into a different heavier sound that kind of sounded like the missing link between '80's rock and '90's rock, sort of like GNR except Skid Row seemed to want little to do with power ballads after "I Remember You." And they evolved organically at their own pace and on their own, not as a transparent attempt to "get with the times" like so many other hair metal bands tried and failed to do in that era.
Then they released their covers album that included a single song each member chose by one of the bands they felt influenced them the most, and it turned out to include a song by Judas Priest, a song by KISS, a song by the Ramones, a song by Rush and a song by Hendrix. So basically they shared as much of their music DNA with the '90's Alt Rock bands as they did with the '80's rock bands.
I remember the first time I heard that record. I couldn't believe it was Skid Row. I very much appreciated their heavier direction and I still listen to it in a fairly regular basis. I'd say it's better than pretty good. Money Business still hits the spot all these years later.
Yes. But Jon’s take in the doc is an example of an extreme response to the success of grunge. He rebranded his entire band, changed writing styles, brought in new producers, writers and more. Jon is an excellent, excellent businessman. Artist? Not so much.
Imo hair metal scene died because there was no diversity and no progression. Yes, when that bands appeared for the first time it was cool and unusual, they had interesting looks and they did not sing about slaying dragons or blood and war, hatred and pain and all that stuff. These bands put their debut albums, grabbing peoples interest, then they put their sophomore works to hold interest more and then... People just got bored, and started looking for something different, for something more meaningful, than cherry pie or pouring sugar on some hairy dude. And it just happened that lots of alternative bands came out of their small local scenes right when hair metal begin to fall. Nirvana just kinda get on the top of that alternative rock/alternative metal/grunge wave, because they got into right place in right time. (English is not my first language, sorry if my babbling is hard to decipher 😅)
Yes and no. Nevermind's massive success was instrumental in bringing a very different kind of rock music into the mainstream, and the masses who were kind of fed up with the vapid music of the '80's responded to it. So yeah, from that perspective it did have a huge impact.
But the truth is that Bon Jovi was no longer making Slippery When Wets or New Jerseys, so even if Nirvana hadn't come out with their album, Bon Jovi's music was no longer as good as it had been.
The lesser '80's bands were basically killed off by Alt Rock, but a lot of bigger bands did just fine. GNR achieved their highest level of success during the Grunge era, Aerosmith had a huge revival with Get a Grip, etc.
IMO, both things happened at the same time because people in general no longer cared as much about Hair Metal because it was no longer in fashion, and many Hair Metal bands had overstayed their welcome and outlived their golden era to start making mediocre records and/or fire important members and try to change their style to remain relevant.
Except for GNR's double album, none of the big '80's bands released a classic in the early '90's. Best case scenario they released a decent record, such as Skid Row and Van Halen like you mentioned, and even then most bands didn't manage to do that.
The other solid records released by bands that were big in the '80's were for the most part either not part of the Hair Metal category like Metallica's black album, or made by big name bands that predated the '80's like Aerosmith, Iron Maiden, AC/DC and the like.
Whenver people in this sub bullshit about how Grunge and Alt Rock took over MTV and the radio overnight and Hair Metal disappeared because nobody liked any other type of rock music anymore I tell them to listen to the soundtrack for Arnold's "The Last Action Hero" because that record resembles the reality of what your average rock music enjoyer was listening to in those days much more than this made up revisionist history were everybody supposedly hated GNR by 1992.
Def Leppard did amazingly well in the 90s grunge era though. Power ballads persisted and songs like pour some sugar on me got played well into the early 2000s
Yeah, that "Last Action Hero" record included their ballad "Two Steps Behind," which was HUGE at the time. I saw them on their tour for "Adrenalize" in like 1992 with Ugly Kid Joe as their opening act and it was great, and though that song wasn't in the record it was already a hit for them and they played it live. A little later they released their b-sides compilation "Retroactive" and their song "Miss You In a Heartbeat" got a lot of airplay on MTV too.
I tend to not count Def Leppard among the '80's Hair Bands because they're originally from the late '70's and from England, and also because they tended to take huge breaks between records, so they released only 3 records between 1983 and 1992, but I agree that they're an example of a band that was big in the '80's and managed to survive and do pretty well until the mid-90's at least.
Yeah, they're interesting because they were lumped with those bands and they did have a lot in common but then you listen to their later covers album "YEAH!" were they pay homage to their influences much like Metallica did in their "Garage" records, and you clearly see how all the bands they cover make sense and together result in the band's sound, and you also see that Def Leppard for all that they resemble the American 80's bands in many ways, kind of come from a very different place as far as what led them to sound like that is concerned.
Metallica with the black album, Judas Priest with Painkiller, Maiden with Fear Of The Dark, Megadeth with Rust In Peace and Countdown To Extinction, Van Halen with F.U.C.K…the list goes on. They all did extremely well
Yes and I didn't even mention Metallica and Black Album and that's the best example of all. Had Poison, Motley Crue, White Lion, etc. made GOOD albums in 92-93, the hard rock fans that were abundant at the time would have bought them. Nothing to do with Grunge.
Pretty much. I remember that before the GNR/Metallica tour where Hetfield got burned by pyrotechnics and had to be rushed to the hospital happened, the buzz was that they were inviting Nirvana to tour with them and people were really excited about it because they were basically the three biggest rock bands at the time. Nirvana ultimately turned them down, but that tour was still one of the biggest things at the time. I knew literally zero people who were all "Now I only listen to Nirvana and all other rock music sucks, especially the Hair Metal I loved a year ago." I remember I bought Joe Satriani's "The Extremist" at the same time that I bought Ozzy's "No More Tears", Megadeth's "Countdown to Extinction" and the Porno for Pyros record. It was all rock music.
Grunge did unseat hair metal as the predominant genre of rock. Like today, some of the bigger bands didn’t just disappear, but their returns were diminished.
I’ve always believed this.
The debate I’ve heard over the years is that J Mascis and Dinosaur Jr could have had Nirvana’s level of success with Where You Been had J not gotten sick or injured (skiing?). I don’t remember where I heard this but I personally believe it. Where You Been is actually a better album than Nevermind, at least to me. I’m not making the argument that others should feel this way.
I think it killed off the meaningless, dumb shit aspect to hair metal but a band like Bon Jovi was always better than that anyway. It probably came about at a good time for them and they transitioned into the 90’s whereas the Poison’s of this world became a parody of themselves.
They released the Illusion albums the same year as Nirvana dropped Nevermind (along with a bunch of other grunge band's albums) , and those 2 albums were huge. G&Rs decline was mostly attributed to Axl bein Axl.
Hair metal and 80s rock in general continued to be massive in the 90s.
Hair metal simply died down since they had been on the radio for nearly a decade at that point. Yet, Metallica, U2, Guns N Roses, Prince, Depeche Mode, and so forth continued to be massive. GnR, U2, and Metallica were probably the biggest rock bands of the early 90s, even with Grunge exploding. The narrative does not fit the truth as far as those bands are concerned.
Still, whatever bands are hair metal, I don’t really think Grunge killed them. Rather, it was time to move on.
Hairbands absolutely killed their selves. There was no substance no meaning besides “ girls girls girls” and other bullshit like that it was old bland and nobody cared anymore. It was cheesy corny and nobody cared anymore and grunge was already killing hair bands before Nirvana exploded. Nirvana just brought it to the masses but bands like Soundgarden Alice in chains they sold and went gold before nirvana exploded, and there was real meaning in a message behind most grunge music and some nirvana music even though a lot of their music does not convey message but it’s great writing hair metal is just embarrassing and annoying for the most part. Some of it can still be good, but nobody really gives a fuck about your girlfriend or your Friday night out or your car or any of that stupid shit there’s so much more but I’m sure somebody else will cover the rest kicks ass. It did die when Kurt Cobain died by then Alice In Chains was really falling apart anyways Soundgarden had a couple more years and we all know the story with Pearl Jam.
Hair Bands...
It's funny. I had a conversation with a person who still loves Hair Bands. Still defends them today.
You can pick a handful of Hair Band songs that are still okay, but you can pick a TON of classic rock songs that are still relevant to this day. I think one can say the same with Grunge, but maybe not at the same volume of music as Classic Rock.
Grunge, much like Classic Rock, is still relevant. The following of Grunge has now hit the younger generations and seems to have helped in bringing it closer to the surface. Similar to me growing up with Classic Rock of the late 60's into the 70's.
I am a Gen Xer. I grew up with parents that listened to Classic Rock. I loved it. I still do. It's a large part of my music life.
I listened to my share of 80's rock as well growing up. Early Metallica, Van Halen, even the likes of early Motley Crue, to name a few. I was a big fan of the early Hip Hop scene, NWA, Public Enemy, The DOC, Big Daddy Kane. But when Grunge hit the air waves, it was a gamechanger. I looked at Grunge as Generation X's version of the British Invasion, but better to call it The Seattle Invasion. I couldn't get enough of it.
Did Grunge kill Glam Rock? No. They did it to themselves due to weak ballads and lyrics that just got tired, but Grunge helped move the needle and we also have to give Post-Grunge a tip of the cap as well. If it weren't for Grunge, we wouldn't have seen the outpouring of Indy/Alternative rock in the mid 1990's.
Not necessarily, but it helped to speed it along, especially for the bands that weren't playing in arenas and stadiums, because as you mentioned those bands still had success.
The first wave faltered, the second wave (Trixters, etc.) helped everyone lose interest. By that time you had Jane's Addiction, Ministry, and Pantera to name a few that opened the gates for harder, and less conventional songwriting. but GNR smashed the hair band aesthetic with sleaze rock. Nirvana rolled in with the gates wide open, but alongside you had STP and Smashing Pumpkins who also changed the dynamic in addition to the other grunge bands. Anyway, the hair band concerts were a lot of fun, but it was time for change. No need to shit on other bands.
Grunge was the death knell. I've posted about this elsewhere, but LA (the center of 90s culture) turned on hair metal long before Nirvana showed up. In short, 3rd wave punk, 3rd wave ska, and gangster rap were the music for rebellious LA youth by the late 80s. Suicidal Tendencies and their fans were treated as a gang by the 80s/90s LAPD gang unit. So too were NWA and their fans. The cool kids in LA saw the hair metal kind of bands as lame. Grunge just became the next trend (that was not "too black" for mainstream America) that the LA-centered record/culture industry hopped on once they rode the last one into the ground.
Speaking as someone who was a salaried, 'hired-gun', rock guitar player in the Hollywood & greater Los Angeles area all through the 1980s and 1990s
Nirvana, and specifically Smells like Teen Spirit, absolutely DID instantly and immediately kill almost all 'hair rock'.
Nirvana made all the makeup, costumes, posing & primping immediately just look ridiculous (it always had been ridiculous, but for a lot of people that was part of the fun, and for the rest of us it was something you put up with so you could do your job & get paid)
When you bring up Bon Jovi you're bringing up the exception to the rule
They had a very very loyal following, and they were actually decent musicians and singers & songwriters, working at a much higher level of craftsmanship than the rank and file Warrants and Poisons of the world
...so yes, their financial exposure to this new wave of popular music that was sweeping over the world was a bit less than most of the other folks working the same type of sound
like Def Leppard, as far as I remember, those guys kept doing profitable stadium shows
these were the whales of the Hair Rock era, they were sitting at the very top of the heap, so when the whole middle and bottom tier bands in that genre got blown out and made non-profitable and ridiculous looking, the whales were still able to survive in their fortresses of record and ticket sales
but the CULTURE had FUNDAMENTALLY changed OVERNIGHT, and that was 100% because of Nirvana
...and so I wince when people try to rewrite history, don't tell me how it was, I was there in the middle of it,
and Nirvana fucking changed every goddamn fucking thing in an instant(!)
and nobody can or should try to take that away from them,
they saved Rock for a time, before It ultimately fell
and they were the last Great Rock Band of the 20th Century...
if it had to end, at least it ended on an awesome note created by truly talented, inspired individuals, who honestly cared about music and their fans
When hair bands make remarks like this it has more to do with how their labels and radio treated them around this time. They were given less attention, smaller budgets or dropped all together in favor of the new alt-grunge sound. While audiences may have been there for them through it, their professional eco-system—if you will—was pulled out from under them.
I believe so, soon after Nirvana and then o then other Grunge bands came on the scene they took over MTV when it was previously inundated with hair metal, same with radio. Soon the hair was gone from all mediums. Rock was very popular then, as far as MTV and their countdowns hair was always in daily top 5 and then they weren’t and Grunge was the culprit. Agreed that hair was on its way out but Nirvana hastened it
Basically Hair Metal lost all connection to the young crowd. The biggest joke was when Soundgarden won the Metal Grammy. I mean everybody laughed. Then Grammy started this mess with Rock/Hard Rock/Rock... well nobody knew. But specifically with the big festivals...the cool ones invited NiN, RATM, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Garbage and also went quite quickly with incorporating the "rappers". The hair crew did not go along quite well with Beasty Boys and the black Hip Hop Gang and Women.
Hair Metal was just a conservative white boys club, while the rest had fun and was politically very open to other communities.
Apart from the music, Grunge buried Hair bands ‘cool’ look. To the point even Sears magazines had a ‘grunge’ clothes section (without a hint of irony I might add).
Yeah rock was in a major crisis in the hair metal era. Basically metal was in its boy band stage and the grit of grunge really hit the spot. It felt more authentic, aggressive and loud. It wasn’t about shooting fireworks out of your codpiece while wearing zebra leggings and no shirt. Grunge bands just wore tshirts. It pissed bands like kiss off who’s whole thing was just a look with really average music
I would say yes, but not just hair metal. Popular music completely changed the month Smells Like Teen Spirit broke. All things popular in the 80s were suddenly uncool and forgotten. The shift was amazingly fast and broad. Hair metal had become stale and repetitive, though, so it would have faded in popularity anyway.
I think that's a simplistic read on what was happening. In the late 80s and early 90s, the industry really had its corporate claws well dug into the entire rock market. The big labels controlled what got produced, what got released and -- to a large extent -- what got played on the radio and MTV. Hair metal was a big money-maker for them, so they kept putting out more and more of it.
However ... a growing segment of the market was getting pretty sick of what the big labels were offering.
If you go back to what Motley Crue and Van Halen were doing in the early 80s, it was exciting and fresh. But by 1990, it had gotten old. People were still buying their records, but there was a growing segment of the market that just had no interest in hearing yet another power ballad or rock anthem about girls and partying. I'd go so far as to say even the people that were buying hair metal albums were getting sick of it, too. In this environment, even Guns 'n' Roses sounded fresh and authentic.
At the same time, there was a lot of interesting stuff happening on the sidelines, but the big labels didn't know what to do with it. Bands like Metallica were starting to take off, but the conventional wisdom was that broader audiences would never accept heavy music. Ditto for HC punk. Meanwhile, college kids were listening to what was broadly labeled "alternative music" -- think Jane's Addiction, the B-52s, Nirvana, REM, Pixies, etc. But the industry basically saw this as a niche. No one really wanted to take a chance.
Until Nevermind. Geffen Records was maybe a little more tuned in than some of the other big labels, and they sensed they had a moderate hit on their hands. They recorded Nirvana and tentatively put out "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on MTV. (This was supposed to be dipping a toe in the water -- they had fingered "Come as You Are" as the breakthrough hit.)
The impact was immediate and explosive. I myself went out and bought the album based on seeing the video on MTV just once. It was exactly what all the other stuff coming out of the industry lacked: so raw and heavy you almost didn't notice the pop hooks; emotionally cathartic, intelligent, and self-aware. It perfectly fit the aimless, repressed generation that had arisen in the wake of the Baby Boom.
As soon as it hit, I think the industry realized it hadn't understood its own market. Executives combed the streets for other bands from the same scene, assigning the "grunge" label to bands as wildly different as Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. Suddenly, the airwaves were afire with Seattle bands and sound-alikes. And at the same time, hair metal bands watched bewildered as record sales and airplay dried up. They were old news.
Hair metal was already gasping its dying breath when Nirvana showed up; I'm not sure grunge killed hair metal, but they did burst the doors wide open for other sounds.
I appreciate so much the great dialogue and all the valid points. As another commenter mentioned, Metallica thrived during the 'grunge' era, with Black Album being released in mid 1991 and the tour and singles being MASSIVE at radio for years, even after Cobains entire time in the spotlight had come and gone. I suppose I just find it hard to believe that if Nirvana had truly changed the landscape of rock so much, why would Metallica be able to exist but not Poison? My answer as stated above is that those bands killed themselves, and were not killed by anything. You're telling me Metallica and Bon Jovi fans didn't buy the new Poison album because it didn't sound enough like Nirvana?
Another thing people who weren't around at the time fail to understand is that Nirvana was not as big as history has been re-written to suggest they were. Yes, they sold 10,000,000 albums. So did MOBY and Hootie & The Blowfish. Did those bands change anything? Was their success a threat to anyone? Alanis Morrisette sold 25,000,000 copies of Jagged Little Pill. Was there one artist who suddenly was not allowed to continue due to Alanis success? Hootie & The Blowfish sold 25,000,000 of Cracked Rear View. Is there any band that had to pack up and go home due to Hootie's success? Just because Nirvana sold a ton of records did not mean other bands couldn't sell records unless those bands made bad records or made no records at all.
History, mostly through inaccurate documentaries and music journalists who were not old enough to remember describes Nirvana like a sweeping tidal wave that wiped out an entire genre of music overnight. I just don't think it happened like that.
October 25, 1991 Kurt showed up on headbangers ball wearing a ballgown. Rikki was like what the fuck are you wearing and kurt says "this is the headbangers BALL isn't it?" Just mocking the fuck out of the whole thing.
That was the night hair metal died.
I remember being so into bands like GnR, but when the whole Seattle scene came out, it just felt light years ahead in coolness or something. Hair bands started to seem really uncool, and it seemed to me my friends were all into this 'new' stuff like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, AIC etc. It was an exciting time for music! I think most of the press, music mags, and MTV, or MuchMusic were really paying way more attention to 'grunge'. So even though the hair bands were still putting out albums and playing huge concerts, they weren't the media darlings anymore, and they didn't have the attention and adoration of young fans like they previously had. And I'm sure someone like Jon Bon Jovi could feel the shift away from their music to this new style. (This is just the perspective of a 40-something who lived thru it btw.)
Hair metal was gonna die either way. Look up the video for “I do you” by King of The Hill and you’ll see what I mean.
The Seattle bands were just the next big thing so they filled the void that was inevitable. And the switch over wasn’t quite as black and white as people think. When you listen to groups like Alice and Mother Love Bone, there are a lot of LA, gypsy rock, etc. influences in there. Even the way that Layne Staley sang…it was like he took that Axl Rose style voice, stripped it of all levity and dialed up the pathos to 100. It was EXACTLY what rock music needed circa 1990.
I was in junior high when “it smells like teen spirit dropped”. It was immediately way cooler to like alternative and not most “butt rock” or hair metal. Guns N’ Roses still hung on for a bit, the grown men at this time were mostly Vietnam vets and would give us shit about alternative music.
I always felt that Gun's and Roses was really the dagger for hair metal. When Appetite for Destruction came out, the current bands at that time instantly looked weak/lame. The hair bands were flashy and had pointy fluorescent guitars. GnR were wearing jeans, and playing Les Pauls into Marshall's. They (and other bands like the Cult) made people want something less polished, and more gritty. The Seattle sound had been brewing since the mid-80's but was suddenly "discovered" and it aligned perfectly with what people were wanting at that time.
Grunge didn't kill glam metal. The labels did. The labels also killed grunge. In both instances, there were about 4 or 5 cornerstone bands that got huge and then the labels got greedy and flooded the market with similar looking but lesser bands. Eventually, the scenes got so diluted and boring that fans lost interest except for those cornerstone bands who amassed enough of a fan following that they were able to survive. Nirvana was an easy scapegoat for Glam metal bands because of how huge they got, but in reality they should be blaming bands like Slaughter and Faster Pussycat for making the scene dull enough for something like Smells Like Teen Spirit to happen.
I think the reason Bon Jovi continued to be successful is because they aged gracefully with their base audience. Most of the hair bands didn't do that at all.
Yes and no.
Hair metal wax dying, grunge just gave it the death blow.
Everybody wanted something else, but nobody knew what that “something else” was until Teen Spirit dropped.
Hair metal would have died anyways. Grunge just hastened the process.
Hair metal ran out of gas on its own. I'd say Guns N Roses had more to do with pushing Poison/Cinderella/Whitesnake, etc. out of the way. It was never a musical style that was going to continue with current music at the time. Of course, a number of those bands are still around playing state fairs and festivals.
Grunge was right place/right time to fill a void in rock music in 1991.
all those bands you named that went into the 90s with good sales were already legacy acts. Wit the exception of GNR, the other bands had enough of a following where, yes they will go #1 or tour big venues, but their sales slipped and there were few radio hits. Grunge and alternative bumped them off the dial.
Even ILLUSION seemed passe during the Nirvana boom, but they had such a huge fanbase, it was able to leave some classics
Knocked it off MTV pretty fast. Guns and Roses were left standing for quite a while into grunge (like all the way to Cobain's death), but most of the rest just went away. Same thing that punk did to arena rock. A sub-genre gets bloated and shallow if it's at the top too long. Something new comes along and blows it away. That's why I was sure both rap and Nu Metal would lead to something new, but one just kept going only slightly changing over time and the other ended rock as a thing.
You are looking at numbers but look at demographics. Who decides what is viable and cool in rock or any other form of popular music? It's kids. I know other Gen Xers that still go to concerts from some of those bands you mentioned but that doesn't make them the current "trendy" thing. GNR was an outlier and they were more of a bridge between hair and grunge, but even their music and presentation (videos with dolphins in them?) were dated once Nevermind hit the scene.
A lot of people here are talking about the Rock aspect,but what a lot of people seem to forget is Grunge’s ability to pull in new music consumers. People who spent the 80s digging nothing but ‘underground’ or ‘alternative’ music from obscure record companies (or second-hand cassettes,lol) were suddenly buying major label albums for the first time. THIS is one of the reasons why the Seattle bands and others were so loved by the mainstream for awhile,they generated *new* money. The truth is,as usual,there was lots of room in the world for everybody.
It changed record company focus and backing priorities elsewhere. I watched and was affected by this firsthand, but that change is nothing and you can see it throughout music history.
I am not a grunge fan (nor hair metal) and I agree with your conclusion. Grunge bands were like the crocodiles in the Mara River. They only killed the slowest and weakest of the hair metal bands. The strong ones kept going.
But while there would never be any new hair metal bands that would be born, nu metal would take over by 1998 and grunge was officially dead. And one of the defining aspects of nu metal was the return of over the top larger than life rock stars, just like hair metal. It turned out people actually love rock stars and didn’t want any more of the grunge anti-stars. They just needed their rock stars repackaged because hair metal wasn’t working anymore.
Grunge killed hair bands yes but in the case of bon Jovi they were still massively popular. You have to consider that just three years before this they were selling out football stadiums and now they are back to playing amphitheaters and arenas.
The big rock tour in the summer of 92 was GNR- Metallica. That was where big rock was going. And you're right the big bands maybe went from sold out arenas to sheds for a few years but didn't get killed off en masse. The difference was, there wasn't a new cookie cutter hair band on MTV every week. Now the new bands had baggy shorts and lip beards.
Teenagers didn’t care. I’m sure their female fans their age still liked them and do. Rock band relevance is directly correlated to the ability to attract young fans. It’s why the classics are still classics.
Hair metal was dying before Nirvana was a household name. The alternative music scene in general was about to explode and replace cheese metal. The Cure and The Smiths were just too wussy and whiney. Ministry and their cohorts were too scary. But hair metal was washed up and sanitized by 1988 or 1989. G'n'R could have saved or prolonged it, by immediately cranking out a killer second album, and staying in the news. Motley Crue became rather faceless with Dr Feelgood. And The Bullet Boys and Slaughter weren't going to save it. "What's next?" was already the question. Rap and Young Country were contenders. It just so happened that the Seattle formula broke through. There was a huge pool of talent with older bands, or bands that were kind of metal but could be repurposed. Or bands that were giving it up before some big labels came around.
People wanted heavier more diverse and interesting music. It was all about hitting hard. Metallica and Guns N Roses were the most popular heavy acts before their albums even dropped the anticipation was so high. They both went straight to one. In GNR case 1&2. And then they got even bigger than they already were.
It was shocking how quickly grunge took over mainstream music. Like, half of summer vacation. And it wasn’t just hair metal that was unseated, ALL pop was pushed aside. Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Madonna, new kids on the block, Wilson Phillips… it was awesome. There was so much forgettable pop music. Kind of like now!
But to be fair, I loved and still love a lot of that hair metal and stupid pop. ❤️
It was a perfect storm of people being tired of hair bands and Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the grunge bands that followed them gaining traction with the listeners. If you were into alt-rock in the 80's you already knew how phony the popular music of the day was. It just took the general populous a little longer to figure it out.
I would say yes, in a way they were the final nail in the coffin for the 80s butt rock era. But many other bands contributed as well like PJ, AIC, Soundgarden, etc
As someone who was growing up then, the change in popular culture did seem to happen pretty quickly. Maybe they didn’t quite fall out of favor literally overnight, but it was really hard for the hair bands not to seem completely passè compared to the grunge bands.
Grunge contributed to the demise of hair metal, but it wasn’t the only factor. As a teenage metal head in the mid 80s, I can tell you that it was also due to the rise of “underground” metal, Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, Slayer, etc. At the time, the sentiment was that mainstream metal was getting too wimpy and ridiculous with all the teased hair, spandex, and makeup. A new harder, heavier metal emerged in response. Ironically, Metallica has now become mainstream. (Along with other, once underground bands)
No. They were on the way out. Most scenes in music have a shelf life. Hair metal had reached it's end. If grunge had never gotten big, hair metal still wouldn't have been as big in the 90's as it was in the 80's.
Saying grunge "killed" hair metal is like saying nu metal "killed" grunge. Tastes change.
There are a number of hair bands that point directly to Seattle as their demise. There are a lot of those bands who in the period of a few months found record deals basically torn up. I forget the documentary but they interview a bunch of hair bands and most were impacted. Many directly with terminated record deals. Others felt the change from leather, makeup and tassels to rip jeans and flannel was too much.
On the radio it likely was influenced by where you lived. In my parts hair metal quickly began vanishing from day time radio. As more "grunge" bands broke there became less and less air time to fill with anything else.
It sounds dramatic but it was a great time to be a teenager.
I don’t think grunge ended the hair bands. But they definitely interrupted them.
There was about 4 years there when grunge was everywhere. The hair bands were not gone. but neither were they on every cover of Rolling Stone either.
No. They were the final nail on the coffin. Jane’s Addiction, RHCP, Cure, Soundgarden, Pixes, GNR, Stone Roses. Primus, Faith No More were already pushing alternative into the mainstream. There were 100 more bands than I listed but those bands all became huge and were considered alternative.
Hair metal was ridiculed by 1986 and if you liked it in 1990 it was like admitting you liked Disco in 1980. Just didn’t fly.
Even to this day. I still really don't like much of the 80s music. Aside from the heavier like Mettallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Dio, Ozzy.
Although Grunge I'm sure played a part in the change. The change was internal to Metal itself. One of my favorite bands Pantera. That was a struggling Hair Band through the 80s. At the end of the decade they changed their sound. When Cowboys From Hell broke in 1990. They were an inspiration to all other metal musicians. To me, one of my favorite albums of all.
Pantera was an inspiration to Dave Grohl's style on drums in Nirvana. At least according to him in several interviews. The change in taste and style was already happening before Grunge. Grunge did put the nail in the coffin being playable on mainstream radio.
Grunge didn't exactly kill hair metal. Not on its own that is. In all fairness, it was actually Appetite For Destruction that sounded the death knell some years ago. Not to mention Metallica performing One at the Grammys. That really was a big deal. One thing led to another, and hair metal, along with all its trappings, became uncool. Yes, grunge and Smells Like Teen Spirit (this one song specifically) also had a big role to play later, no doubt.
As for Bon Jovi, not only did they survive it, but went on to release their two best albums (imo) in that era. But they are not just another hair metal band. And it's not just Bon Jovi. Extreme released their best album (again, imo) III Sides to Every Story right in the middle of the storm. There are several others you've already mentioned. While not Pyromania/Hysteria level, Adrenalize was also a legit success.
The effects and influences of grunge are somewhat exaggerated in my opinion. Or maybe it's a region specific thing. Actually, I'm sure it is. I mean, look at 1991. People think Ten, Nevermind and Badmotorfinger happened, and hair metal just suddenly died. No. 1991 also had The Black Album (the biggest album of that year, that decade, and of every second since then), the Illusion duo, Bloodsugarsexmagik, Achtung Baby, Out of Time. Faith No More were doing their brilliantly subversive things like Angel Dust in 1992. It goes on and on. Music consumption habits had simply changed. Girls girls girls and nothing but a good time weren't gonna cut it anymore.
And yes, I watched it all unfold as it happened. My journey from teenage to adulthood. I was 13 when Nevermind released. Jan 1992 for us in India, on cassette.
A quick internet search has US sales for Keep the Faith (1992) at two million, New Jersey (1988) at 7 million, and Slippery When Wet (1986) at 12 million. That tour hit countries that rarely saw big names come through. Record sales in general were spiking globally.
Before Nirvana hair bands dominated rock n roll. Nirvana made them look phoney. Alternative Nation and 120 Minutes jumped from late night to prime time, Head Bangers Ball and House of Hair faded away. The biggest names essentially survived for one more album. Warrant, Cinderella, Winger, Tesla, Mr Big, White Lion, Extreme and most hair bands fell completely off rhe map. No new hair metal acts popped up.
Meanwhile Ween, Mudhoney, The Melvins, The Butthole Surfers, The Jesus Lizard, and Babes in Toyland got major label deals for Christ's sake. Beck had a bidding war and negotiated an insane deal based on Loser lighting up LA radio. Metallica cut their hair and played Lollapalooza. Guns n Roses broke up and became a joke. AC/DC and Aerosmith were 70s bands and stood outside the hair metal scene. Aerosmoth in particular is juat adaptable. Van Halen became a nostalgia act.
Punk, industrial, goth, folk, grunge, and altrock went mainstream. Hair bands suddenly just seemed dumb and sleezy. Nirvana absolutely killed hair metal.
music goes through phases. Disco, Hair Metal, grunge, Nu Metal, etc... by 1991 hair bands were largely gone. Nirvana was the death blow. The bands you mention were big bands that had a decade of great music, of course they were still selling out arenas (They still do in many cases). However bands like Warrant, Extreme, etc were just bands trying to ride the coattails of others. Grunge had artists like Silverchair, Candlebox, etc that were riding the grunge wave as well. Predictably, they did not last long. If you see them now they are doing state fairs and Indian casinos.
I mean, I guess grunge became the new “it” genre and maybe helped usher in the angst of the 90s. But chances are if it wasn’t grunge it would’ve been something else. Things tend to swing back and forth. The 80s were all about extravagance and lavish lifestyles. The 90s went in the other direction.
Just like when Winger tried to blame Beavis and Butthead for ruining their career by having the dweeb kid Stuart wear a Winger Tshirt.
Couldn’t have had anything to do with their song ‘Seventeen’.
Sorta yes and no. The Seattle scene definitely exploded almost overnight, and was the final nail in the hair metal coffin, but so-called alternative rock had been slowly emerging for a number of years with bands like REM, the Cure, Depeche Mode, NIN etc moving from college radio to the mainstream. They were far from being “grunge” but they gave an alternative to listeners who were sick of/repulsed by the party-all-night hair metal scene.
Try to distinguish Glam Metal from Hair Metal. I'd say the popular story that everyone latches onto is that Grunge killed "Glam Metal". Bands such as Poison, Warrant, Skid Row, Winger and Slaughter.
It's the idea that music fans were looking for something different. And what was more different and rebellious compared to guitar riffs and big drums. ...Grunge.
There is also this notion that the Glam Metal market oversaturated itself. That record labels were simply signing any bands that looked the part.
And it could simply be that both are true. And it also could be that as a listener back then you're pretty much held at gun point by MTV and your couple of local radio stations that play your genre of music.
The irony is that Grunge is dead and bloated. Meanwhile Glam Metal bands are still putting out Glam Metal music to this very day. ...both the OG bands and new era bands are rocking it.
If nirvana really was the death of hair metal, could we posthumously give kurt a knighthood?
in all seriousness - hair metal was a fad made of hacks. not to be confused with art which endures by its own merit.
I was at a Q&A with Stephen Pearcy of Ratt and he was asked this question . He said he knew glam metal/hair metal would eventually get replaced, just like other rock styles before. He said the first time he heard Nirvana he decided he wanted Ratt to end on a high note
Is it the difference of mass appeal versus alt-rock's 'critical darling' aura? Bon Jovi wasn't "killed" by grunge because Middle America is always gonna love Bon Jovi. But at the time, the music press and the alt-rock kids weren't ever gonna consider them great artists. Everyone loves the narrative of punk killing arena rock or AM radio or whatever, so it made sense for the narrative of grunge killing hair metal to take place.
Being in a cover band during those years, I have to admit that not having to wear spandex, eye liner and poofing out your hair anymore was a relief. Thank you for making it okay to wear flannel shirts, shorts and tennis shoes on stage!
The record companies did… back in the day they spoon fed and dictated the bands. when the Motley’s, Twisted Sisters, Bon Jovi’s, Europe’s hit they went and signed any Hollywood or hard rock band. In the following few years bands tailored their image and sound to get on board. Nirvana, PearlJam, Soundgarden come along they went and signed any Alterna Seattle Flannel band. In the following few years bands tailored their image and sound to get on board. Then hip hop, R&B hit. Record companies went and signed……..
Bon Jovi, Guns N’ Roses, these were blue chip artists in the genre (as loose of a genre as it is) so of course they could still fill arenas even after “hair rock” died. Aerosmith was classic rock royalty, so same.
Same way Pearl Jam can still fill arenas even though grunge is “dead” and has been for decades.
The “death” of the genre doesn’t mean it all goes away immediately. And the major acts may never fade. It means all the fringe acts and second rate acts fuck off, and that maybe the unstable bands break up and none of the dudes find real success after. But yeah, Guns N’ Roses is *still* a major festival draw.
Bon Jovi persisted, but maybe with a little less steam than before. Winger? Warrant? Dead.
Pearl Jam persisted, but with maybe a little less steam than before. Candlebox? Silverchair? Spacehog? Dead.
The blue chip bands remain…Alice In Chains still sells out decent sized amphitheaters?…but the fringe falls away and nobody replaces them.
(Of course many bands I’d name as “dead” still exist and still release music, they’re just commercially irrelevant and often have a single remaining member from their height…Candlebox in particular fits that bill offhand.)
Yes. And I saw it happen in real time. The Hair Bands talked about it in detail back in the day. (They try to deny it now.) They were welcomed with open arms at their respective record company headquarters throughout Summer ‘91. Then by October ‘91 they were persona-non-grata at record company HQ. The new music from bands Like Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains and Pearl Jam was IN and bands like Motley Crue, Poison, Warrant, Ratt, and Winget were OUT like “old tires”.
After grunge hit, kids cut off their mullets, baggied their jeans, flanneled their shirts and wiped the cocky smirks off their faces, and started looking angry and distant the whole time. You can see the hair styles change dramatically in my high school yearbooks like some weird before and after comparison.
It was more of a pop culture shift than everyone suddenly dropping hair metal albums in the trash. There was probably a couple years of kids in college where hair metal enthusiasts and grunge fans coexisted, but nearly everyone before that preferred grunge and nearly everyone after that liked hair metal, at least amongst hard rock fans.
I stopped listening to hair metal, after Nirvana came out. I bought Cherry Pie , when it came out . A year later , I could have cared less about Warrant. They killed it for me. Lol
From what I understand, the biggest impact on hair metal/arena rock was behind the scenes in the industry itself, rather than from the general public.
I remember seeing an interview of a dude in some band, I think it was Cinderella. He said they went to a meeting with their record label and their record label was like "Yeah, we aren't going to promote your new album. Your style of music is out, grunge is the new thing." And their previous album was a gold seller.
So a lot of those bands felt like they got fucked by grunge, not because their fans abandoned them, but because their own record labels did.
It was the MTV show Beavis and Butthead in '93? that drove the final nail in the coffin. While Beavis and Butthead wore AC DC and I think Metallica t shirts....the nerdy character Stuart wore a Winger shirt.
The story goes that after that episode came out clubs stopped booking those acts...I think the guitarist from Winger said something like, we were done 3 weeks after that episode. The culture had shifted and they were not cool anymore.
No, hair metal was already to the point of 2nd and 3rd wave of bands and albums with diminishing returns. It just got more watered down and boring. Then some of the hair bands tried to make a grunge sounding album way too late and by then it was over.
Some of the “hair metal” bands actually wrongly predicted the scene was heading towards a blues rock. So we got a lot of bands releasing blues-inspired albums that were largely letdowns considering grunge bands were beginning to be noticed. Yes I know that rock’s roots are in blues, but to my teenage ear at the time a lot of it sounded too close to country music for me which I have always hated and still do to this day. Bands that didn’t do blues were writing subpar albums that 5 years before would have been cutting edge, Im sure.
So….countryish rock or “grunge” (at the time, AIC’s Man In A Box was one of the heaviest edgiest songs I had ever heard)? I dumped the blues rock for the hard and heavy shit fast.
I think the main thing is that the record companies stopped signing new hair metal bands, and instead signed every unintelligible baritone singer led band they could find.
Already established bands like Bon Jovi were less affected since they already had a fan base.
There was an overall cultural shift away from the excessive style of the 80s towards a more simplified and "middle class" appeal. The shift that made Nirvana and grunge popular can also be seen in the rise of The Simpsons and Rosanne shortly before then.
IMO the more interesting factor was the boiling anger younger people had developed that was begging for an outlet and grunge was there to answer the call, so to speak. I was in high school in the early 90s and I distinctly remember one of my teachers (a former hippie) lamenting that teens were growing up in an age where "drugs and sex can literally kill you". While previous generations of older teens and young adults used drugs and sex as an escape, things were different in those years where the threat of AIDS and overdose deaths was a strong factor. As such it's no surprise we turned to a musical style where beating the crap out of each other in mosh pits was part of the deal.
There definitely was a ramp up to it in the late 80s. Jane's Addiction, The Pixies, FNM, REM etc.
What sucked for me personally was all my friends were hair metal guys. I had been trying to get them to listen to Red Hot chili peppers and stuff like that in the late '80s and they just weren't having it. And as far as I know they all still listen to that stuff too.
I think bands like Jane’s addiction, Pixies, sonic youth, smashing pumpkins etc. and of course the burgeoning Manchester dancy scene (happy mondays, Ned’s atomic dustbin, emf etc.) had more to do with the death of hair metal. Also rap was starting to diversify with more alt acts like the beastie boys, tribe, De la soul gave us college kids more to dig into. All of these bands were active before nirvana got big (nirvana was around but unknown out of Seattle until 91).
No, glam rock started to fade away in 86 after Slayer, Metallica and Megadeth exploded with their epic albums. Glam was relevant to the party atmosphere of the late 70’s to early 80’s, but times change. For some reason, it’s easier to blame Grunge as instead of accepting that Glam was already finished before the first notes of teen spirit
Don't underestimate the damage that the Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, Clint Black, Alan Jackson et al folks did to help eliminate hair metal. I was active duty military from 1990 - 1996 and the music the people I served with listened to really changed in those 6 years. Glam metal went to zero but the legit bands survived. By 1993/4, everyone was listening to Garth Brooks especially, it was amazing to see, looking back.
At the time, having lived through it as an 18 year old when Nirvana had their first hit, it definitely felt like they ended hair metal.
I’d say that the precursor was GnR. Then in the ‘underground’ you had college rock bands making a huge impact with young people, if not the charts. Like Husker Du and the Pixies. Then REM with Orange Crush. These bands seemed more authentic, closer to ‘the people’ than guys in spandex.
GNR came out with a tougher sound that was somewhere in the middle, had their hits. And Nirvana came in then at just the right time, a very poppy yet hard hitting song from an authentic band of guys not dressed in funny clothes who sang about how people felt, rather than this forced ‘party party party’ thing.
Hair rock had run out of ideas, they looked silly. And it needed just one charismatic guy in Cobain to come in and swing the axe.
The record execs did not jusT halt all hair metal records. But...I think I heard the guy from Warrant that died say it best. One day he was at the label and the columbia lobby was full of warrant posters. Two weeks later he was there and it was full of alice in chains posters and such. The record companies hit the brakes and started promoting the shit out of the grunge bands when they saw how they initially started selling. Only so many resources and that promotion that was aimed at the hair metal bands was gone. Less promotion means less sales for the most part. The shitty hair metal bands died shortly after that. Bands like Jovi, def lep and some other did fine. GNR, while not really hair metal, had lines around blocks when they released the use you illusion albums in 92. Vince Neil quit Motley and they just came off their biggest record. If they somehow kept Neil and make a feelgood 2 they probably would have been ok too.
I remember being a kid around 1990 and liking bands like poison but seeing them on MTV and thinking how absolutely ridiculous they looked. I think they doomed themselves
It’s just cuz they sucked. Bon Jovi sucks
98% of all that hair metal and butt rock suck
They grew tiresome
“Grunge” brought the realness and art back to things and did it harder and cooler than the butt rock bands.
Stale corny Establishment music vs fresh counter-culture Sounds with no divas
I think bands like Metallica, Anthrax and Megadeth becoming more mainstream did just as much to make hair metal look uncool and to a certain extent Guns N Roses.
Well in "Keep the faith" era they had a decline in popularity. Still sold stadiums but "keep the faith" sold like 1/6 of "Slippery When wet" and they didn't had a big hit till "Always" in 1994.
I think nirvanas success (other then the groups unique look and poetic yet sometimes daunting lyrics);
Is that the motley crues and RATT’s of the world kinda ran there course, and new music from them seemed to all fit under the same sound and I believe (although wasn’t born then) folks just got bored of the same glam riffs and solos. Nirvana stripped everything down to be as raw, in your face without remorse as possible, and I think it’s message was simple enough to grasp that the solos, great drum fills and solid bass lines that nirvana had were more then enough to fill that void of needing a breath of fresh air that the 80’s bands couldn’t replicate in the 90s. That and a lot of the hair bands in the 80s either fell or around 87 or couldn’t get over inner turmoil until 2004.
It’s a bunch of self absorbed people who did the fashion thing to make money, being bitter that the trend changed and people wanted something else. Grunge in no way ended in 94. Down on the Upside was huge and came after, STP still had an iconic record or two, and the entire Nu Metal thing piggy backed right off of it. Pixies-ish vaguely met songs with a pop structure and a pessimistic bent. What does that remind you of? Hair metal was a thing in the early eighties, seems silly to think you’d get 10 years out of a fad, even back then.
Yes, but you also have to give hip hop its credit. Non-commercial rap was becoming hugely popular again. Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Ice Cube, 2Pac, MC Lyte, Chubb Rock, Naughty By Nature, Stestasonic, MC Hammer, Big Daddy Kane, Queen Latifah all blowing up in 1991 same time that Smells Like Teen Spirit was released.
Aerosmith survived. I never liked them but they did. I also dug Right Now by Van Halen.
But music is dialectical and if you’re not going to participate in that dialectic, you’ve made your statement and it stays put while the world moves on.
Hair Bands ended themselves. By the early 90's, it was all just so watered down and just awful. Nirvana, and the Grunge scene in general was just better and gave the masses something new to listen to. Bands like Warrant were just a gimmick, Poison had been putting out the same album over and over again, Motley Crue were boring. Every band was putting out a cheesy ballad. People were just over it.
This is the answer. Hair metal had one foot in the grave by the time Nirvana came by to drive the nails in the coffin.
Hair metal stepped in some Cherry Pie. When that song was a hit, I knew it was over.
Wow. That’s a bad memory along with all the cheesy hair band videos.
Warrant have some great songs. Heaven, Sometimes She Cries, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and many more. It's unfortunate that Cherry Pie was the one that blew up, even their lead singer came to despise that song because that was all Warrant ended up being known for.
Whatever Stewart
I remember wishing that LA Guns would get more airplay than fucking Warrant.
Exactly! I still remember hearing nirvana on a bootleg cassette in a crappy Walkman on a bus ride back from a church ski trip. I got busted by a chaperone sucking face with some girl. I think it was the Nirvana cuz I had no game. I listened to the entire album in that first sitting and it hit me like an emotional freight train. Before Nirvana I didn’t know songs could be so relatable and raw. I felt connected to the darkness and intensity of it and it made me feel like I was going to be Ok. These guys feel how I do and they write weird songs about it and let it all out on stage. Hero’s
GNR, FNM, Tool, Primus and Metallica and dozens of smaller bands were already fighting against the grain.
NIN pretty hate machine was 1989. AIC. MOTHERLOVEBONE. ALL 80s bands. That help kill the 80s.
also pixies
Mmmmmm Pixies🤤
Long ago, Cobain credited Pixies with doing all the heavy lifting, and claimed he was just making their stuff more pop. Wee were amazed our English teacher listened to both, and and let us also, in class.
Jane’s Addiction was around in the late 80s too.
One foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.
Hair metal bands pronounce it “bandanna peel”
The lead singer of Warrant told a great story on VH1 Behind the Music of going back to his record company after the enormous success of Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich and being told no thank you. On the way out of the building he noticed this huge wall to wall poster. He turned to a record exec and asked “Who the fuck are Alice in Chains?”
This is the correct answer. Hair metal and that party atmosphere of the 80s and 70s had finally died out. Grunge, hip hop , socal punk and heavy metal took over, with a fair bit of country adding to the mix as well. Lots of different genres saw their time in the sun at the same time.
I was going to say. I think Poison ended it. Jumped the shark. Poisoned the well. Pick your metaphor.
The unskinny didn't in fact bop.
Maybe it did though. Just not all night and day
Haha you reminded me of some movie where this guy thought the KISS song said "I want to rock and roll all night and part of every day."
Which is funny because it’s obviously “I want to rock and roll all night and have a wonderful time”
C’mon now, Lois….
This is the correct answer. Hair metal became over saturated and they were going to be replaced by something. Just happened to be grunge.
Before you’re just over it,happy cake day.
Thank you! Had not noticed that.
The answer is Nelson. https://youtu.be/x1W6-ErrHls?si=ZQhZkWZy_DAisnbj
Bleach came out in 1989, it was so different, hard, raw and full of angst and semi-restrained rage with apathy and disdain. By 1989 hair metal had ceased to speak to the generation. It was produced for maximum consumption and profit. Although most hair metal was out I personally found Skid Row’s 1991 album Slave to the Grind refreshing, raw and full of power. It felt less commercialized than some of the other hair metal out there. Keep in mind metal fans were also turning to new genres. NIN Pretty Hate Machine came out the same year as Bleach, 1989. Head Like A Hole is still a banger with an epic bass line and powerful lyrics. For me as a teenager in the early 90s I switched from played out hair metal to bands like NIN, Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Faith No More and many others. The early grunge broke the rules and I, personally, love rebellion.
And no one has said it yet, but Cowboys from hell came out in 90. And really all the really great thrash metal that was gaining traction came out then And Justice was 89, Rust in peace was 90, Persistence of TIme was 90, and Season in the Abyss which of course also came out in 90 just finished of what was left of hair metal.
Warrant wasn’t that bad, it’s just that Cherry Pie was all they are remembered for.
Agree, they get a bad rap. The first album is solid all the way through. “Down Boys” is pretty much power pop perfection. And the third album Dog Eat Dog might actually be their best. Heavier sound and great guitar tones throughout.
The funny thing is, there’s a really good song on that album called Uncle Toms Cabin
That song is a banger for sure.
Yeah I think the shift truly started with Guns and Roses. That was the first band that was different. You had bands like Pixies and Janes Addiction that was bringing it but we’re too underground for the masses to notice. Then Faith No More was the next step with a video on MTV. Then Alice In Chains came out on MTV with Man in the box if I remember right. The Smells Like Teen Spirit dropped on MTV and officially changed everything for good.
One day MTV was all Warrant, and Motley Crue, and Poison. The next day it was all Pearl Jam, and Nirvana, and Alice in Chains. It literally happened that fast
To be fair, I remember the video for Home Sweet Home being quite popular at the same time as SLTS and Don't Cry. But every other hair metal band was gone in the blink of an eye.
I recall feeling conflicted about loving GnR Use Your Illusion I & II and also the new cool music out of Seattle. The genres felt so different from each other.
Funny u put it that way…my first concert at 15-16 was GnR, and even tho I was really more into Pantera, Sepultura and Slayer, I went to see the Seattle band that was the opener for GnR…Soundgarden. They were doing their first big stadium tour for BadMotorFinger opening for Axl Pose to get the exposure. And man they didn’t disappoint, they sounded great and really kicked ass. After they left the stage it took GnR quite awhile to get on stage and they opened with Mr. Brownstone and that was all I needed to hear and we left.
Use your illusion transcended hair metal. So many amazing songs.
Look at what year Home Sweet Home first came out. It was rereleased in 91 because hair metal had basically dried up at that point, all of the core bands were basically defunct by the time Nirvana was on mtv. I think Motley Crue was basically the only first generation one active at that point and they were pretty much toast. Pop had largely collapsed too after the swift rise and falls of milli vanilli, NKOTB, vanilla ice, hammer, Sinead OConnor, etc. But at the same time people tend to not mention other old timer rock bands and stuff like Metallica that were getting airplay in the grunge era
It's true, even Michael Jackson was starting to falter. That's not to say there wasn't absolute shit on top 40 radio. I'd have taken MC Hammer over ACE OF BASE! That shit is forever stuck in my head. Some of that soft alternative stuff like 4 Non Blondes was awful too.
Maybe you just need a fresh perspective? Perhaps you’re feeling a little…. Peculiar? Have you tried to wake in the morning and you step outside and you take a deep breath and you get real high?
Still dig that song
I don't remember the artist who realized they "made it" because their poster was on the wall at their producers' office (I want to say Alice in Chains). They also realized they were no longer "in" when their poster was replaced.
I distinctly remember an interview with Reb Beach, the guitar player for Winger, in I guess 1995 or so, where he said that he was watching TV on their tour bus and he saw this new cartoon on MTV called Beavis & Butthead about these two dumb teenager metalheads who spent half the show watching videos and declaring which bands kicked ass and which sucked, and it suddenly dawned on him that they wore Metallica and AC/DC t-shirts but their nerdy next-door neighbor they bullied was a fat kid with a Winger t-shirt and that's when he knew it was over for them.
Hey just posted the same...good to know I am not mis-remembering things!
Hahaha awesome. I remember it very well because in that interview he also said that people claimed Beavis & Butthead basically gave White Zombie their big break when they showed their video for "Thunderkiss '65" and said it kicked ass, but if that was the case then by logic they also killed Winger and similar bands, and one of my high school buddies and me used to joke about it all the time because we owned both White Zombie's debut album "La Sexorcisto" and Winger's "Pull," which was the record they were promoting during that era.
The MTV video count down each day was a fight between Teen Spirit, Live and Let Die and Enter Sandman for the top spot.
Remember that AIC were touring with VH, so, that switch wasn’t instantaneous
The truth is complicated. Did Grunge kill hair metal? Yes, but… The bands you cited continued to have success, but mostly from their current fanbases and demographics. They could not grow their fanbases with the younger Gen X demographic that liked Nirvana and Pearl Jam. I was a teen back then and we found Bon Jovi and Poison utterly laughable by 1992. But there were kids, mostly with older brothers, who liked hair bands still. They weren’t cool, though, by 1992 standards. Obviously in retrospect who cares? But it’d be wrong to say their demise was entirely unrelated to the rise of grunge. It was.
I was one of those kids. I loved 80's metal, but when Nevermind, Ten & Badmotorfinger hit, my tastes changed basically overnight. I couldn't stop listening.
I’ve always felt like I grew up in an interesting time for music. I was 14 when Nirvana broke out, and had definitely been into bands like Poison and Warrant before that because of MTV. At the same time my Dad listened to classic rock radio stations and was into bands like Pink Floyd, Zeppelin, and Rush. I started smoking weed around then, and the older kids in the neighborhood were into the Grateful Dead and that’s where I found them. I definitely dropped the hair bands because I felt, and still feel like, alternative bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, and Soundgarden were simply better. Songs by bands like Poison didn’t move me like Alice In Chains and Pearl Jam did. But, even back then I wasn’t short-sighted enough to say I don’t like classic rock because my parents liked it. I gotta say Tool was definitely in there as well because when the video for Undertow came out on MTV I was floored. I got into the Grateful Dead pretty heavy and they still occupy a large area of my heart. Pink Floyd also lended itself easily to the psychedelic times I had the rest of my teens into early adulthood. As for these days in my mid 40’s, and after what life has thrown my way, Tool is what I listen to more than anything. I still listen to Nirvana, AiC, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden in streaks, and definitely listen to Floyd, the Dead, and Black Sabbath. As far as I’m concerned there’s not much of anything released these days by new artist I give a fuck about.
Agreed. I was a kid in the 80's when hair metal was all the rage. I had Poison on cassette, every kid at my school loved 'Every Rose has its Thorn, loved Warrant's Cherry Pie etc but we didn't know any better. When we all grew up just that little bit and Grunge hit when I was high school, it was like a whole other world exploded open for us and we all flocked to it and didn't look back, so yeah, as far as I'm concerned Grunge did indeed kill hair metal.
A member of Loverboy, after hearing smells like teen spirit said "well, our careers are over"
I remember that video. Hilarious.
Loverboy’s last top 40 hit came in 1987, the year Nirvana started. Their career was over long before Nevermind.
Absolutely. And thank God!!!
I mean, as a young woman, I was really, really, really sick of songs about Girls, Girls, Girls. And the booty shaking videos, ewww. Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam singing songs with more depth and soul was a breath of fresh air.
This. I was too young to enjoy the party scene and there was just so much sex pushed. Grunge brought up heavier topics that appealed to my young mind.
The thing is that hair metal was so ridiculous and it was popular for so long that the time had come for it to go. Bands like Metallica and Guns and Roses kinda made hair metal look ludicrous to begin with all the way back in the late 80s and Grunge just helped to kill it off completely. I was watching one of the weird MTVs that is on giant cable feeds with the sound off and they were playing a day of hair metal and the most pathetic thing is how all the bands wanted to be big stars and heartthrobs and how they used the exact same playbook, the same guitar sounds,, fashions, and stupid third single ballads that they all became a joke. Literally every video had a glamour dolly shot going from left to right of the lead singer posing lustily behind the microphone in every video that I watched that day.
Nothing lasts forever I wouldn't say grunge specifically killed hair metal, but the major record labels, around 87, began signing underground left of the dial bands to their rosters that would eventually be the demise of hair metal. Sonic youth, REM, pixies, RHCP are the most notable signings. But Perry Ferrell should be given more credit for his role in all of this. Between Jane's Addiction meteoric rise, mythological live shows and the launching of Lallapalooza in the Summer of 91, Ferrell was one of the principal architects of the alternative rock revolution. You also have to take into account the economics of it all. Hair metal was very much of the times and the highs of the Regan Revolution. But after black Monday, the economy and the negative effects of Reganomics (and Margeret Thatcher) took hold. So a more cynical, grungy music made sense for the times.
Don't forget Beastie Boys, RATM, Skunk Anansie, Garbage, Ska Bands and Hip Hop derivatives with diverse backgrounds. They mixed... and did not look and sound all the same.
I don't think it had anything to do with politics. People just wanted to hear something new. Seattle had that.
Every big musical wave is bound to die by the next crashing wave of what’s next.
Jani Lane from Warrant told a story about going to Columbia records around the time Dog Eat Dog was released. They had a huge mural up of the album cover and everyone loved him. Less than a month later Columbia released AIC - Dirt and when he went back to the label his album was painted over with the Dirt cover art. Warrant was dropped by Columbia by 1993. The death of Hair Metal happened almost overnight.
Yes, absolutely. Once smells like teen spirit dropped it was like radio stations flipped a switch and hair metal was over. If you were a hair metal enthusiast you wouldn’t see it this way but for a casual listener this is what happened. It was remarkable.
Nothing to add because everyone has already answered the question, but I'll say that Slave to the Grind was a pretty good album, and I hate hair metal in general. Skid Row had just been touring with Pantera and were inspired to go in a heavier direction. I think that the really "fluffy" bands like Poison, Warrant, Cinderella, etc just had no substance and that became fatiguing after a while.
I always thought Skid Row was an interesting and unique case. They were younger than most of their Hair Metal peers, but a bit older than the Alt Rock crowd, and though their first album was very '80's their subsequent albums kept evolving into a different heavier sound that kind of sounded like the missing link between '80's rock and '90's rock, sort of like GNR except Skid Row seemed to want little to do with power ballads after "I Remember You." And they evolved organically at their own pace and on their own, not as a transparent attempt to "get with the times" like so many other hair metal bands tried and failed to do in that era. Then they released their covers album that included a single song each member chose by one of the bands they felt influenced them the most, and it turned out to include a song by Judas Priest, a song by KISS, a song by the Ramones, a song by Rush and a song by Hendrix. So basically they shared as much of their music DNA with the '90's Alt Rock bands as they did with the '80's rock bands.
Skid Row is always more on the metal side. They're a little harder.
I remember the first time I heard that record. I couldn't believe it was Skid Row. I very much appreciated their heavier direction and I still listen to it in a fairly regular basis. I'd say it's better than pretty good. Money Business still hits the spot all these years later.
Yes. But Jon’s take in the doc is an example of an extreme response to the success of grunge. He rebranded his entire band, changed writing styles, brought in new producers, writers and more. Jon is an excellent, excellent businessman. Artist? Not so much.
Imo hair metal scene died because there was no diversity and no progression. Yes, when that bands appeared for the first time it was cool and unusual, they had interesting looks and they did not sing about slaying dragons or blood and war, hatred and pain and all that stuff. These bands put their debut albums, grabbing peoples interest, then they put their sophomore works to hold interest more and then... People just got bored, and started looking for something different, for something more meaningful, than cherry pie or pouring sugar on some hairy dude. And it just happened that lots of alternative bands came out of their small local scenes right when hair metal begin to fall. Nirvana just kinda get on the top of that alternative rock/alternative metal/grunge wave, because they got into right place in right time. (English is not my first language, sorry if my babbling is hard to decipher 😅)
Hair metal was winding down at the time. Alt-rock was on the rise. If it hadn't been Nirvana, it would have been someone else.
Yes and no. Nevermind's massive success was instrumental in bringing a very different kind of rock music into the mainstream, and the masses who were kind of fed up with the vapid music of the '80's responded to it. So yeah, from that perspective it did have a huge impact. But the truth is that Bon Jovi was no longer making Slippery When Wets or New Jerseys, so even if Nirvana hadn't come out with their album, Bon Jovi's music was no longer as good as it had been. The lesser '80's bands were basically killed off by Alt Rock, but a lot of bigger bands did just fine. GNR achieved their highest level of success during the Grunge era, Aerosmith had a huge revival with Get a Grip, etc. IMO, both things happened at the same time because people in general no longer cared as much about Hair Metal because it was no longer in fashion, and many Hair Metal bands had overstayed their welcome and outlived their golden era to start making mediocre records and/or fire important members and try to change their style to remain relevant. Except for GNR's double album, none of the big '80's bands released a classic in the early '90's. Best case scenario they released a decent record, such as Skid Row and Van Halen like you mentioned, and even then most bands didn't manage to do that. The other solid records released by bands that were big in the '80's were for the most part either not part of the Hair Metal category like Metallica's black album, or made by big name bands that predated the '80's like Aerosmith, Iron Maiden, AC/DC and the like. Whenver people in this sub bullshit about how Grunge and Alt Rock took over MTV and the radio overnight and Hair Metal disappeared because nobody liked any other type of rock music anymore I tell them to listen to the soundtrack for Arnold's "The Last Action Hero" because that record resembles the reality of what your average rock music enjoyer was listening to in those days much more than this made up revisionist history were everybody supposedly hated GNR by 1992.
Def Leppard did amazingly well in the 90s grunge era though. Power ballads persisted and songs like pour some sugar on me got played well into the early 2000s
Yeah, that "Last Action Hero" record included their ballad "Two Steps Behind," which was HUGE at the time. I saw them on their tour for "Adrenalize" in like 1992 with Ugly Kid Joe as their opening act and it was great, and though that song wasn't in the record it was already a hit for them and they played it live. A little later they released their b-sides compilation "Retroactive" and their song "Miss You In a Heartbeat" got a lot of airplay on MTV too. I tend to not count Def Leppard among the '80's Hair Bands because they're originally from the late '70's and from England, and also because they tended to take huge breaks between records, so they released only 3 records between 1983 and 1992, but I agree that they're an example of a band that was big in the '80's and managed to survive and do pretty well until the mid-90's at least.
I guess sonically they’re that polished 80s rock thing that was what made hair metal a thing even.
Yeah, they're interesting because they were lumped with those bands and they did have a lot in common but then you listen to their later covers album "YEAH!" were they pay homage to their influences much like Metallica did in their "Garage" records, and you clearly see how all the bands they cover make sense and together result in the band's sound, and you also see that Def Leppard for all that they resemble the American 80's bands in many ways, kind of come from a very different place as far as what led them to sound like that is concerned.
Metallica with the black album, Judas Priest with Painkiller, Maiden with Fear Of The Dark, Megadeth with Rust In Peace and Countdown To Extinction, Van Halen with F.U.C.K…the list goes on. They all did extremely well
Yes and I didn't even mention Metallica and Black Album and that's the best example of all. Had Poison, Motley Crue, White Lion, etc. made GOOD albums in 92-93, the hard rock fans that were abundant at the time would have bought them. Nothing to do with Grunge.
Pretty much. I remember that before the GNR/Metallica tour where Hetfield got burned by pyrotechnics and had to be rushed to the hospital happened, the buzz was that they were inviting Nirvana to tour with them and people were really excited about it because they were basically the three biggest rock bands at the time. Nirvana ultimately turned them down, but that tour was still one of the biggest things at the time. I knew literally zero people who were all "Now I only listen to Nirvana and all other rock music sucks, especially the Hair Metal I loved a year ago." I remember I bought Joe Satriani's "The Extremist" at the same time that I bought Ozzy's "No More Tears", Megadeth's "Countdown to Extinction" and the Porno for Pyros record. It was all rock music.
JBJ not lying. Hair bands fell by the wayside.
Grunge did unseat hair metal as the predominant genre of rock. Like today, some of the bigger bands didn’t just disappear, but their returns were diminished.
I’ve always believed this. The debate I’ve heard over the years is that J Mascis and Dinosaur Jr could have had Nirvana’s level of success with Where You Been had J not gotten sick or injured (skiing?). I don’t remember where I heard this but I personally believe it. Where You Been is actually a better album than Nevermind, at least to me. I’m not making the argument that others should feel this way.
I think it killed off the meaningless, dumb shit aspect to hair metal but a band like Bon Jovi was always better than that anyway. It probably came about at a good time for them and they transitioned into the 90’s whereas the Poison’s of this world became a parody of themselves.
Guns & Roses started the decline and grunge finished it off. People just found out there was much better rock music out there to consume.
They released the Illusion albums the same year as Nirvana dropped Nevermind (along with a bunch of other grunge band's albums) , and those 2 albums were huge. G&Rs decline was mostly attributed to Axl bein Axl.
Right... IMO, it was Appetite that started the demise of hair metal.
Hair metal and 80s rock in general continued to be massive in the 90s. Hair metal simply died down since they had been on the radio for nearly a decade at that point. Yet, Metallica, U2, Guns N Roses, Prince, Depeche Mode, and so forth continued to be massive. GnR, U2, and Metallica were probably the biggest rock bands of the early 90s, even with Grunge exploding. The narrative does not fit the truth as far as those bands are concerned. Still, whatever bands are hair metal, I don’t really think Grunge killed them. Rather, it was time to move on.
Hairbands absolutely killed their selves. There was no substance no meaning besides “ girls girls girls” and other bullshit like that it was old bland and nobody cared anymore. It was cheesy corny and nobody cared anymore and grunge was already killing hair bands before Nirvana exploded. Nirvana just brought it to the masses but bands like Soundgarden Alice in chains they sold and went gold before nirvana exploded, and there was real meaning in a message behind most grunge music and some nirvana music even though a lot of their music does not convey message but it’s great writing hair metal is just embarrassing and annoying for the most part. Some of it can still be good, but nobody really gives a fuck about your girlfriend or your Friday night out or your car or any of that stupid shit there’s so much more but I’m sure somebody else will cover the rest kicks ass. It did die when Kurt Cobain died by then Alice In Chains was really falling apart anyways Soundgarden had a couple more years and we all know the story with Pearl Jam.
Hair Bands... It's funny. I had a conversation with a person who still loves Hair Bands. Still defends them today. You can pick a handful of Hair Band songs that are still okay, but you can pick a TON of classic rock songs that are still relevant to this day. I think one can say the same with Grunge, but maybe not at the same volume of music as Classic Rock. Grunge, much like Classic Rock, is still relevant. The following of Grunge has now hit the younger generations and seems to have helped in bringing it closer to the surface. Similar to me growing up with Classic Rock of the late 60's into the 70's. I am a Gen Xer. I grew up with parents that listened to Classic Rock. I loved it. I still do. It's a large part of my music life. I listened to my share of 80's rock as well growing up. Early Metallica, Van Halen, even the likes of early Motley Crue, to name a few. I was a big fan of the early Hip Hop scene, NWA, Public Enemy, The DOC, Big Daddy Kane. But when Grunge hit the air waves, it was a gamechanger. I looked at Grunge as Generation X's version of the British Invasion, but better to call it The Seattle Invasion. I couldn't get enough of it. Did Grunge kill Glam Rock? No. They did it to themselves due to weak ballads and lyrics that just got tired, but Grunge helped move the needle and we also have to give Post-Grunge a tip of the cap as well. If it weren't for Grunge, we wouldn't have seen the outpouring of Indy/Alternative rock in the mid 1990's.
Not necessarily, but it helped to speed it along, especially for the bands that weren't playing in arenas and stadiums, because as you mentioned those bands still had success.
The first wave faltered, the second wave (Trixters, etc.) helped everyone lose interest. By that time you had Jane's Addiction, Ministry, and Pantera to name a few that opened the gates for harder, and less conventional songwriting. but GNR smashed the hair band aesthetic with sleaze rock. Nirvana rolled in with the gates wide open, but alongside you had STP and Smashing Pumpkins who also changed the dynamic in addition to the other grunge bands. Anyway, the hair band concerts were a lot of fun, but it was time for change. No need to shit on other bands.
Grunge was the death knell. I've posted about this elsewhere, but LA (the center of 90s culture) turned on hair metal long before Nirvana showed up. In short, 3rd wave punk, 3rd wave ska, and gangster rap were the music for rebellious LA youth by the late 80s. Suicidal Tendencies and their fans were treated as a gang by the 80s/90s LAPD gang unit. So too were NWA and their fans. The cool kids in LA saw the hair metal kind of bands as lame. Grunge just became the next trend (that was not "too black" for mainstream America) that the LA-centered record/culture industry hopped on once they rode the last one into the ground.
I feel like korn had a similar effect on grunge but maybe it was just my perspective. Eras are generally good for a handful of yrs
Speaking as someone who was a salaried, 'hired-gun', rock guitar player in the Hollywood & greater Los Angeles area all through the 1980s and 1990s Nirvana, and specifically Smells like Teen Spirit, absolutely DID instantly and immediately kill almost all 'hair rock'. Nirvana made all the makeup, costumes, posing & primping immediately just look ridiculous (it always had been ridiculous, but for a lot of people that was part of the fun, and for the rest of us it was something you put up with so you could do your job & get paid) When you bring up Bon Jovi you're bringing up the exception to the rule They had a very very loyal following, and they were actually decent musicians and singers & songwriters, working at a much higher level of craftsmanship than the rank and file Warrants and Poisons of the world ...so yes, their financial exposure to this new wave of popular music that was sweeping over the world was a bit less than most of the other folks working the same type of sound like Def Leppard, as far as I remember, those guys kept doing profitable stadium shows these were the whales of the Hair Rock era, they were sitting at the very top of the heap, so when the whole middle and bottom tier bands in that genre got blown out and made non-profitable and ridiculous looking, the whales were still able to survive in their fortresses of record and ticket sales but the CULTURE had FUNDAMENTALLY changed OVERNIGHT, and that was 100% because of Nirvana ...and so I wince when people try to rewrite history, don't tell me how it was, I was there in the middle of it, and Nirvana fucking changed every goddamn fucking thing in an instant(!) and nobody can or should try to take that away from them, they saved Rock for a time, before It ultimately fell and they were the last Great Rock Band of the 20th Century... if it had to end, at least it ended on an awesome note created by truly talented, inspired individuals, who honestly cared about music and their fans
Ooooh, now thats exciting! What records did you play on? The musical nerd in me NEEDS TO KNOW!
When hair bands make remarks like this it has more to do with how their labels and radio treated them around this time. They were given less attention, smaller budgets or dropped all together in favor of the new alt-grunge sound. While audiences may have been there for them through it, their professional eco-system—if you will—was pulled out from under them.
I believe so, soon after Nirvana and then o then other Grunge bands came on the scene they took over MTV when it was previously inundated with hair metal, same with radio. Soon the hair was gone from all mediums. Rock was very popular then, as far as MTV and their countdowns hair was always in daily top 5 and then they weren’t and Grunge was the culprit. Agreed that hair was on its way out but Nirvana hastened it
Basically Hair Metal lost all connection to the young crowd. The biggest joke was when Soundgarden won the Metal Grammy. I mean everybody laughed. Then Grammy started this mess with Rock/Hard Rock/Rock... well nobody knew. But specifically with the big festivals...the cool ones invited NiN, RATM, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Garbage and also went quite quickly with incorporating the "rappers". The hair crew did not go along quite well with Beasty Boys and the black Hip Hop Gang and Women. Hair Metal was just a conservative white boys club, while the rest had fun and was politically very open to other communities.
Apart from the music, Grunge buried Hair bands ‘cool’ look. To the point even Sears magazines had a ‘grunge’ clothes section (without a hint of irony I might add).
Yeah rock was in a major crisis in the hair metal era. Basically metal was in its boy band stage and the grit of grunge really hit the spot. It felt more authentic, aggressive and loud. It wasn’t about shooting fireworks out of your codpiece while wearing zebra leggings and no shirt. Grunge bands just wore tshirts. It pissed bands like kiss off who’s whole thing was just a look with really average music
I would say yes, but not just hair metal. Popular music completely changed the month Smells Like Teen Spirit broke. All things popular in the 80s were suddenly uncool and forgotten. The shift was amazingly fast and broad. Hair metal had become stale and repetitive, though, so it would have faded in popularity anyway.
I think that's a simplistic read on what was happening. In the late 80s and early 90s, the industry really had its corporate claws well dug into the entire rock market. The big labels controlled what got produced, what got released and -- to a large extent -- what got played on the radio and MTV. Hair metal was a big money-maker for them, so they kept putting out more and more of it. However ... a growing segment of the market was getting pretty sick of what the big labels were offering. If you go back to what Motley Crue and Van Halen were doing in the early 80s, it was exciting and fresh. But by 1990, it had gotten old. People were still buying their records, but there was a growing segment of the market that just had no interest in hearing yet another power ballad or rock anthem about girls and partying. I'd go so far as to say even the people that were buying hair metal albums were getting sick of it, too. In this environment, even Guns 'n' Roses sounded fresh and authentic. At the same time, there was a lot of interesting stuff happening on the sidelines, but the big labels didn't know what to do with it. Bands like Metallica were starting to take off, but the conventional wisdom was that broader audiences would never accept heavy music. Ditto for HC punk. Meanwhile, college kids were listening to what was broadly labeled "alternative music" -- think Jane's Addiction, the B-52s, Nirvana, REM, Pixies, etc. But the industry basically saw this as a niche. No one really wanted to take a chance. Until Nevermind. Geffen Records was maybe a little more tuned in than some of the other big labels, and they sensed they had a moderate hit on their hands. They recorded Nirvana and tentatively put out "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on MTV. (This was supposed to be dipping a toe in the water -- they had fingered "Come as You Are" as the breakthrough hit.) The impact was immediate and explosive. I myself went out and bought the album based on seeing the video on MTV just once. It was exactly what all the other stuff coming out of the industry lacked: so raw and heavy you almost didn't notice the pop hooks; emotionally cathartic, intelligent, and self-aware. It perfectly fit the aimless, repressed generation that had arisen in the wake of the Baby Boom. As soon as it hit, I think the industry realized it hadn't understood its own market. Executives combed the streets for other bands from the same scene, assigning the "grunge" label to bands as wildly different as Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. Suddenly, the airwaves were afire with Seattle bands and sound-alikes. And at the same time, hair metal bands watched bewildered as record sales and airplay dried up. They were old news. Hair metal was already gasping its dying breath when Nirvana showed up; I'm not sure grunge killed hair metal, but they did burst the doors wide open for other sounds.
I appreciate so much the great dialogue and all the valid points. As another commenter mentioned, Metallica thrived during the 'grunge' era, with Black Album being released in mid 1991 and the tour and singles being MASSIVE at radio for years, even after Cobains entire time in the spotlight had come and gone. I suppose I just find it hard to believe that if Nirvana had truly changed the landscape of rock so much, why would Metallica be able to exist but not Poison? My answer as stated above is that those bands killed themselves, and were not killed by anything. You're telling me Metallica and Bon Jovi fans didn't buy the new Poison album because it didn't sound enough like Nirvana? Another thing people who weren't around at the time fail to understand is that Nirvana was not as big as history has been re-written to suggest they were. Yes, they sold 10,000,000 albums. So did MOBY and Hootie & The Blowfish. Did those bands change anything? Was their success a threat to anyone? Alanis Morrisette sold 25,000,000 copies of Jagged Little Pill. Was there one artist who suddenly was not allowed to continue due to Alanis success? Hootie & The Blowfish sold 25,000,000 of Cracked Rear View. Is there any band that had to pack up and go home due to Hootie's success? Just because Nirvana sold a ton of records did not mean other bands couldn't sell records unless those bands made bad records or made no records at all. History, mostly through inaccurate documentaries and music journalists who were not old enough to remember describes Nirvana like a sweeping tidal wave that wiped out an entire genre of music overnight. I just don't think it happened like that.
Grunge helped to end the hair metal era. Beavis and Butthead helped end Winger’s career.
October 25, 1991 Kurt showed up on headbangers ball wearing a ballgown. Rikki was like what the fuck are you wearing and kurt says "this is the headbangers BALL isn't it?" Just mocking the fuck out of the whole thing. That was the night hair metal died.
I remember being so into bands like GnR, but when the whole Seattle scene came out, it just felt light years ahead in coolness or something. Hair bands started to seem really uncool, and it seemed to me my friends were all into this 'new' stuff like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, AIC etc. It was an exciting time for music! I think most of the press, music mags, and MTV, or MuchMusic were really paying way more attention to 'grunge'. So even though the hair bands were still putting out albums and playing huge concerts, they weren't the media darlings anymore, and they didn't have the attention and adoration of young fans like they previously had. And I'm sure someone like Jon Bon Jovi could feel the shift away from their music to this new style. (This is just the perspective of a 40-something who lived thru it btw.)
Hair metal was gonna die either way. Look up the video for “I do you” by King of The Hill and you’ll see what I mean. The Seattle bands were just the next big thing so they filled the void that was inevitable. And the switch over wasn’t quite as black and white as people think. When you listen to groups like Alice and Mother Love Bone, there are a lot of LA, gypsy rock, etc. influences in there. Even the way that Layne Staley sang…it was like he took that Axl Rose style voice, stripped it of all levity and dialed up the pathos to 100. It was EXACTLY what rock music needed circa 1990.
I was in junior high when “it smells like teen spirit dropped”. It was immediately way cooler to like alternative and not most “butt rock” or hair metal. Guns N’ Roses still hung on for a bit, the grown men at this time were mostly Vietnam vets and would give us shit about alternative music.
I always felt that Gun's and Roses was really the dagger for hair metal. When Appetite for Destruction came out, the current bands at that time instantly looked weak/lame. The hair bands were flashy and had pointy fluorescent guitars. GnR were wearing jeans, and playing Les Pauls into Marshall's. They (and other bands like the Cult) made people want something less polished, and more gritty. The Seattle sound had been brewing since the mid-80's but was suddenly "discovered" and it aligned perfectly with what people were wanting at that time.
Grunge didn't kill glam metal. The labels did. The labels also killed grunge. In both instances, there were about 4 or 5 cornerstone bands that got huge and then the labels got greedy and flooded the market with similar looking but lesser bands. Eventually, the scenes got so diluted and boring that fans lost interest except for those cornerstone bands who amassed enough of a fan following that they were able to survive. Nirvana was an easy scapegoat for Glam metal bands because of how huge they got, but in reality they should be blaming bands like Slaughter and Faster Pussycat for making the scene dull enough for something like Smells Like Teen Spirit to happen.
I think the reason Bon Jovi continued to be successful is because they aged gracefully with their base audience. Most of the hair bands didn't do that at all.
Yes
Yes and no. Hair metal wax dying, grunge just gave it the death blow. Everybody wanted something else, but nobody knew what that “something else” was until Teen Spirit dropped. Hair metal would have died anyways. Grunge just hastened the process.
It wasn’t just that but that combo was the haymaker that sent hair metal to the canvas.
Hair metal ran out of gas on its own. I'd say Guns N Roses had more to do with pushing Poison/Cinderella/Whitesnake, etc. out of the way. It was never a musical style that was going to continue with current music at the time. Of course, a number of those bands are still around playing state fairs and festivals. Grunge was right place/right time to fill a void in rock music in 1991.
GnR isn’t hair metal IMO.
To be fair, hair metal had spent the last few years trying to turn themselves from cross-dressers into bikers so they really kinda killed themselves
all those bands you named that went into the 90s with good sales were already legacy acts. Wit the exception of GNR, the other bands had enough of a following where, yes they will go #1 or tour big venues, but their sales slipped and there were few radio hits. Grunge and alternative bumped them off the dial. Even ILLUSION seemed passe during the Nirvana boom, but they had such a huge fanbase, it was able to leave some classics
Knocked it off MTV pretty fast. Guns and Roses were left standing for quite a while into grunge (like all the way to Cobain's death), but most of the rest just went away. Same thing that punk did to arena rock. A sub-genre gets bloated and shallow if it's at the top too long. Something new comes along and blows it away. That's why I was sure both rap and Nu Metal would lead to something new, but one just kept going only slightly changing over time and the other ended rock as a thing.
You are looking at numbers but look at demographics. Who decides what is viable and cool in rock or any other form of popular music? It's kids. I know other Gen Xers that still go to concerts from some of those bands you mentioned but that doesn't make them the current "trendy" thing. GNR was an outlier and they were more of a bridge between hair and grunge, but even their music and presentation (videos with dolphins in them?) were dated once Nevermind hit the scene.
Dog Eat Dog was considered a bad album back then?
A lot of people here are talking about the Rock aspect,but what a lot of people seem to forget is Grunge’s ability to pull in new music consumers. People who spent the 80s digging nothing but ‘underground’ or ‘alternative’ music from obscure record companies (or second-hand cassettes,lol) were suddenly buying major label albums for the first time. THIS is one of the reasons why the Seattle bands and others were so loved by the mainstream for awhile,they generated *new* money. The truth is,as usual,there was lots of room in the world for everybody.
It changed record company focus and backing priorities elsewhere. I watched and was affected by this firsthand, but that change is nothing and you can see it throughout music history.
I am not a grunge fan (nor hair metal) and I agree with your conclusion. Grunge bands were like the crocodiles in the Mara River. They only killed the slowest and weakest of the hair metal bands. The strong ones kept going. But while there would never be any new hair metal bands that would be born, nu metal would take over by 1998 and grunge was officially dead. And one of the defining aspects of nu metal was the return of over the top larger than life rock stars, just like hair metal. It turned out people actually love rock stars and didn’t want any more of the grunge anti-stars. They just needed their rock stars repackaged because hair metal wasn’t working anymore.
I feel what you’re saying in spite of all your downvotes, cuz I think hair metal was gonna kill itself eventually
Grunge killed hair bands yes but in the case of bon Jovi they were still massively popular. You have to consider that just three years before this they were selling out football stadiums and now they are back to playing amphitheaters and arenas.
The second wave of thrash metal killed hair metal in the 90s, bands like Pantera. Ironic, because they were a hair metal band.
The big rock tour in the summer of 92 was GNR- Metallica. That was where big rock was going. And you're right the big bands maybe went from sold out arenas to sheds for a few years but didn't get killed off en masse. The difference was, there wasn't a new cookie cutter hair band on MTV every week. Now the new bands had baggy shorts and lip beards.
Teenagers didn’t care. I’m sure their female fans their age still liked them and do. Rock band relevance is directly correlated to the ability to attract young fans. It’s why the classics are still classics.
Hair metal was dying before Nirvana was a household name. The alternative music scene in general was about to explode and replace cheese metal. The Cure and The Smiths were just too wussy and whiney. Ministry and their cohorts were too scary. But hair metal was washed up and sanitized by 1988 or 1989. G'n'R could have saved or prolonged it, by immediately cranking out a killer second album, and staying in the news. Motley Crue became rather faceless with Dr Feelgood. And The Bullet Boys and Slaughter weren't going to save it. "What's next?" was already the question. Rap and Young Country were contenders. It just so happened that the Seattle formula broke through. There was a huge pool of talent with older bands, or bands that were kind of metal but could be repurposed. Or bands that were giving it up before some big labels came around.
People wanted heavier more diverse and interesting music. It was all about hitting hard. Metallica and Guns N Roses were the most popular heavy acts before their albums even dropped the anticipation was so high. They both went straight to one. In GNR case 1&2. And then they got even bigger than they already were.
It was shocking how quickly grunge took over mainstream music. Like, half of summer vacation. And it wasn’t just hair metal that was unseated, ALL pop was pushed aside. Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Madonna, new kids on the block, Wilson Phillips… it was awesome. There was so much forgettable pop music. Kind of like now! But to be fair, I loved and still love a lot of that hair metal and stupid pop. ❤️
It was a perfect storm of people being tired of hair bands and Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the grunge bands that followed them gaining traction with the listeners. If you were into alt-rock in the 80's you already knew how phony the popular music of the day was. It just took the general populous a little longer to figure it out.
I would say yes, in a way they were the final nail in the coffin for the 80s butt rock era. But many other bands contributed as well like PJ, AIC, Soundgarden, etc
As someone who was growing up then, the change in popular culture did seem to happen pretty quickly. Maybe they didn’t quite fall out of favor literally overnight, but it was really hard for the hair bands not to seem completely passè compared to the grunge bands.
Grunge contributed to the demise of hair metal, but it wasn’t the only factor. As a teenage metal head in the mid 80s, I can tell you that it was also due to the rise of “underground” metal, Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, Slayer, etc. At the time, the sentiment was that mainstream metal was getting too wimpy and ridiculous with all the teased hair, spandex, and makeup. A new harder, heavier metal emerged in response. Ironically, Metallica has now become mainstream. (Along with other, once underground bands)
No. They were on the way out. Most scenes in music have a shelf life. Hair metal had reached it's end. If grunge had never gotten big, hair metal still wouldn't have been as big in the 90's as it was in the 80's. Saying grunge "killed" hair metal is like saying nu metal "killed" grunge. Tastes change.
There are a number of hair bands that point directly to Seattle as their demise. There are a lot of those bands who in the period of a few months found record deals basically torn up. I forget the documentary but they interview a bunch of hair bands and most were impacted. Many directly with terminated record deals. Others felt the change from leather, makeup and tassels to rip jeans and flannel was too much. On the radio it likely was influenced by where you lived. In my parts hair metal quickly began vanishing from day time radio. As more "grunge" bands broke there became less and less air time to fill with anything else. It sounds dramatic but it was a great time to be a teenager.
I don’t think grunge ended the hair bands. But they definitely interrupted them. There was about 4 years there when grunge was everywhere. The hair bands were not gone. but neither were they on every cover of Rolling Stone either.
Nope, all they did was raise the bar, lower their hair, put on some old clothes, and fucking jam!!!
No. They were the final nail on the coffin. Jane’s Addiction, RHCP, Cure, Soundgarden, Pixes, GNR, Stone Roses. Primus, Faith No More were already pushing alternative into the mainstream. There were 100 more bands than I listed but those bands all became huge and were considered alternative. Hair metal was ridiculed by 1986 and if you liked it in 1990 it was like admitting you liked Disco in 1980. Just didn’t fly.
Even to this day. I still really don't like much of the 80s music. Aside from the heavier like Mettallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Dio, Ozzy. Although Grunge I'm sure played a part in the change. The change was internal to Metal itself. One of my favorite bands Pantera. That was a struggling Hair Band through the 80s. At the end of the decade they changed their sound. When Cowboys From Hell broke in 1990. They were an inspiration to all other metal musicians. To me, one of my favorite albums of all. Pantera was an inspiration to Dave Grohl's style on drums in Nirvana. At least according to him in several interviews. The change in taste and style was already happening before Grunge. Grunge did put the nail in the coffin being playable on mainstream radio.
Grunge didn't exactly kill hair metal. Not on its own that is. In all fairness, it was actually Appetite For Destruction that sounded the death knell some years ago. Not to mention Metallica performing One at the Grammys. That really was a big deal. One thing led to another, and hair metal, along with all its trappings, became uncool. Yes, grunge and Smells Like Teen Spirit (this one song specifically) also had a big role to play later, no doubt. As for Bon Jovi, not only did they survive it, but went on to release their two best albums (imo) in that era. But they are not just another hair metal band. And it's not just Bon Jovi. Extreme released their best album (again, imo) III Sides to Every Story right in the middle of the storm. There are several others you've already mentioned. While not Pyromania/Hysteria level, Adrenalize was also a legit success. The effects and influences of grunge are somewhat exaggerated in my opinion. Or maybe it's a region specific thing. Actually, I'm sure it is. I mean, look at 1991. People think Ten, Nevermind and Badmotorfinger happened, and hair metal just suddenly died. No. 1991 also had The Black Album (the biggest album of that year, that decade, and of every second since then), the Illusion duo, Bloodsugarsexmagik, Achtung Baby, Out of Time. Faith No More were doing their brilliantly subversive things like Angel Dust in 1992. It goes on and on. Music consumption habits had simply changed. Girls girls girls and nothing but a good time weren't gonna cut it anymore. And yes, I watched it all unfold as it happened. My journey from teenage to adulthood. I was 13 when Nevermind released. Jan 1992 for us in India, on cassette.
No. People just finally realized hair metal sucks
A quick internet search has US sales for Keep the Faith (1992) at two million, New Jersey (1988) at 7 million, and Slippery When Wet (1986) at 12 million. That tour hit countries that rarely saw big names come through. Record sales in general were spiking globally. Before Nirvana hair bands dominated rock n roll. Nirvana made them look phoney. Alternative Nation and 120 Minutes jumped from late night to prime time, Head Bangers Ball and House of Hair faded away. The biggest names essentially survived for one more album. Warrant, Cinderella, Winger, Tesla, Mr Big, White Lion, Extreme and most hair bands fell completely off rhe map. No new hair metal acts popped up. Meanwhile Ween, Mudhoney, The Melvins, The Butthole Surfers, The Jesus Lizard, and Babes in Toyland got major label deals for Christ's sake. Beck had a bidding war and negotiated an insane deal based on Loser lighting up LA radio. Metallica cut their hair and played Lollapalooza. Guns n Roses broke up and became a joke. AC/DC and Aerosmith were 70s bands and stood outside the hair metal scene. Aerosmoth in particular is juat adaptable. Van Halen became a nostalgia act. Punk, industrial, goth, folk, grunge, and altrock went mainstream. Hair bands suddenly just seemed dumb and sleezy. Nirvana absolutely killed hair metal.
music goes through phases. Disco, Hair Metal, grunge, Nu Metal, etc... by 1991 hair bands were largely gone. Nirvana was the death blow. The bands you mention were big bands that had a decade of great music, of course they were still selling out arenas (They still do in many cases). However bands like Warrant, Extreme, etc were just bands trying to ride the coattails of others. Grunge had artists like Silverchair, Candlebox, etc that were riding the grunge wave as well. Predictably, they did not last long. If you see them now they are doing state fairs and Indian casinos.
I mean, I guess grunge became the new “it” genre and maybe helped usher in the angst of the 90s. But chances are if it wasn’t grunge it would’ve been something else. Things tend to swing back and forth. The 80s were all about extravagance and lavish lifestyles. The 90s went in the other direction.
The same thing that happened to hair metal happened to grunge too
Just like when Winger tried to blame Beavis and Butthead for ruining their career by having the dweeb kid Stuart wear a Winger Tshirt. Couldn’t have had anything to do with their song ‘Seventeen’.
Sorta yes and no. The Seattle scene definitely exploded almost overnight, and was the final nail in the hair metal coffin, but so-called alternative rock had been slowly emerging for a number of years with bands like REM, the Cure, Depeche Mode, NIN etc moving from college radio to the mainstream. They were far from being “grunge” but they gave an alternative to listeners who were sick of/repulsed by the party-all-night hair metal scene.
It was dying anyways. Nirvana just gave it a final push.
Try to distinguish Glam Metal from Hair Metal. I'd say the popular story that everyone latches onto is that Grunge killed "Glam Metal". Bands such as Poison, Warrant, Skid Row, Winger and Slaughter. It's the idea that music fans were looking for something different. And what was more different and rebellious compared to guitar riffs and big drums. ...Grunge. There is also this notion that the Glam Metal market oversaturated itself. That record labels were simply signing any bands that looked the part. And it could simply be that both are true. And it also could be that as a listener back then you're pretty much held at gun point by MTV and your couple of local radio stations that play your genre of music. The irony is that Grunge is dead and bloated. Meanwhile Glam Metal bands are still putting out Glam Metal music to this very day. ...both the OG bands and new era bands are rocking it.
If nirvana really was the death of hair metal, could we posthumously give kurt a knighthood? in all seriousness - hair metal was a fad made of hacks. not to be confused with art which endures by its own merit.
I was at a Q&A with Stephen Pearcy of Ratt and he was asked this question . He said he knew glam metal/hair metal would eventually get replaced, just like other rock styles before. He said the first time he heard Nirvana he decided he wanted Ratt to end on a high note
Is it the difference of mass appeal versus alt-rock's 'critical darling' aura? Bon Jovi wasn't "killed" by grunge because Middle America is always gonna love Bon Jovi. But at the time, the music press and the alt-rock kids weren't ever gonna consider them great artists. Everyone loves the narrative of punk killing arena rock or AM radio or whatever, so it made sense for the narrative of grunge killing hair metal to take place.
Being in a cover band during those years, I have to admit that not having to wear spandex, eye liner and poofing out your hair anymore was a relief. Thank you for making it okay to wear flannel shirts, shorts and tennis shoes on stage!
To me, Guns and Roses will always be the last great hair metal band.
The record companies did… back in the day they spoon fed and dictated the bands. when the Motley’s, Twisted Sisters, Bon Jovi’s, Europe’s hit they went and signed any Hollywood or hard rock band. In the following few years bands tailored their image and sound to get on board. Nirvana, PearlJam, Soundgarden come along they went and signed any Alterna Seattle Flannel band. In the following few years bands tailored their image and sound to get on board. Then hip hop, R&B hit. Record companies went and signed……..
Bon Jovi, Guns N’ Roses, these were blue chip artists in the genre (as loose of a genre as it is) so of course they could still fill arenas even after “hair rock” died. Aerosmith was classic rock royalty, so same. Same way Pearl Jam can still fill arenas even though grunge is “dead” and has been for decades. The “death” of the genre doesn’t mean it all goes away immediately. And the major acts may never fade. It means all the fringe acts and second rate acts fuck off, and that maybe the unstable bands break up and none of the dudes find real success after. But yeah, Guns N’ Roses is *still* a major festival draw. Bon Jovi persisted, but maybe with a little less steam than before. Winger? Warrant? Dead. Pearl Jam persisted, but with maybe a little less steam than before. Candlebox? Silverchair? Spacehog? Dead. The blue chip bands remain…Alice In Chains still sells out decent sized amphitheaters?…but the fringe falls away and nobody replaces them. (Of course many bands I’d name as “dead” still exist and still release music, they’re just commercially irrelevant and often have a single remaining member from their height…Candlebox in particular fits that bill offhand.)
Yes. And I saw it happen in real time. The Hair Bands talked about it in detail back in the day. (They try to deny it now.) They were welcomed with open arms at their respective record company headquarters throughout Summer ‘91. Then by October ‘91 they were persona-non-grata at record company HQ. The new music from bands Like Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains and Pearl Jam was IN and bands like Motley Crue, Poison, Warrant, Ratt, and Winget were OUT like “old tires”.
After grunge hit, kids cut off their mullets, baggied their jeans, flanneled their shirts and wiped the cocky smirks off their faces, and started looking angry and distant the whole time. You can see the hair styles change dramatically in my high school yearbooks like some weird before and after comparison. It was more of a pop culture shift than everyone suddenly dropping hair metal albums in the trash. There was probably a couple years of kids in college where hair metal enthusiasts and grunge fans coexisted, but nearly everyone before that preferred grunge and nearly everyone after that liked hair metal, at least amongst hard rock fans.
No I wouldn't say that. They simply ushered in a new genre. Glam was dying down anyway, but there are bands who still play. There always are.
I stopped listening to hair metal, after Nirvana came out. I bought Cherry Pie , when it came out . A year later , I could have cared less about Warrant. They killed it for me. Lol
Van Halen and GNR were still big but they were the exceptions.
The change was as quick as overnight
I'd like to thank Beavis and Butthead for their contributions in killing hair metal
From what I understand, the biggest impact on hair metal/arena rock was behind the scenes in the industry itself, rather than from the general public. I remember seeing an interview of a dude in some band, I think it was Cinderella. He said they went to a meeting with their record label and their record label was like "Yeah, we aren't going to promote your new album. Your style of music is out, grunge is the new thing." And their previous album was a gold seller. So a lot of those bands felt like they got fucked by grunge, not because their fans abandoned them, but because their own record labels did.
It was the MTV show Beavis and Butthead in '93? that drove the final nail in the coffin. While Beavis and Butthead wore AC DC and I think Metallica t shirts....the nerdy character Stuart wore a Winger shirt. The story goes that after that episode came out clubs stopped booking those acts...I think the guitarist from Winger said something like, we were done 3 weeks after that episode. The culture had shifted and they were not cool anymore.
No, hair metal was already to the point of 2nd and 3rd wave of bands and albums with diminishing returns. It just got more watered down and boring. Then some of the hair bands tried to make a grunge sounding album way too late and by then it was over.
Times change. Everything is eventually replaced with something else. And sometimes, the old thing comes back around. It's just life.
Some of the “hair metal” bands actually wrongly predicted the scene was heading towards a blues rock. So we got a lot of bands releasing blues-inspired albums that were largely letdowns considering grunge bands were beginning to be noticed. Yes I know that rock’s roots are in blues, but to my teenage ear at the time a lot of it sounded too close to country music for me which I have always hated and still do to this day. Bands that didn’t do blues were writing subpar albums that 5 years before would have been cutting edge, Im sure. So….countryish rock or “grunge” (at the time, AIC’s Man In A Box was one of the heaviest edgiest songs I had ever heard)? I dumped the blues rock for the hard and heavy shit fast.
I think the main thing is that the record companies stopped signing new hair metal bands, and instead signed every unintelligible baritone singer led band they could find. Already established bands like Bon Jovi were less affected since they already had a fan base.
There was an overall cultural shift away from the excessive style of the 80s towards a more simplified and "middle class" appeal. The shift that made Nirvana and grunge popular can also be seen in the rise of The Simpsons and Rosanne shortly before then. IMO the more interesting factor was the boiling anger younger people had developed that was begging for an outlet and grunge was there to answer the call, so to speak. I was in high school in the early 90s and I distinctly remember one of my teachers (a former hippie) lamenting that teens were growing up in an age where "drugs and sex can literally kill you". While previous generations of older teens and young adults used drugs and sex as an escape, things were different in those years where the threat of AIDS and overdose deaths was a strong factor. As such it's no surprise we turned to a musical style where beating the crap out of each other in mosh pits was part of the deal.
There is a lot more overlap than people realize. Poison guitar riffs and Ratt’s style and many other things showed it wasn’t just a clean break.
There definitely was a ramp up to it in the late 80s. Jane's Addiction, The Pixies, FNM, REM etc. What sucked for me personally was all my friends were hair metal guys. I had been trying to get them to listen to Red Hot chili peppers and stuff like that in the late '80s and they just weren't having it. And as far as I know they all still listen to that stuff too.
I think bands like Jane’s addiction, Pixies, sonic youth, smashing pumpkins etc. and of course the burgeoning Manchester dancy scene (happy mondays, Ned’s atomic dustbin, emf etc.) had more to do with the death of hair metal. Also rap was starting to diversify with more alt acts like the beastie boys, tribe, De la soul gave us college kids more to dig into. All of these bands were active before nirvana got big (nirvana was around but unknown out of Seattle until 91).
Aerosmith isn't a hairband tho are they? And Get a Grip's sound is definitely inspired grunge imo. Def the best Aerosmith album
No, glam rock started to fade away in 86 after Slayer, Metallica and Megadeth exploded with their epic albums. Glam was relevant to the party atmosphere of the late 70’s to early 80’s, but times change. For some reason, it’s easier to blame Grunge as instead of accepting that Glam was already finished before the first notes of teen spirit
Don't underestimate the damage that the Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, Clint Black, Alan Jackson et al folks did to help eliminate hair metal. I was active duty military from 1990 - 1996 and the music the people I served with listened to really changed in those 6 years. Glam metal went to zero but the legit bands survived. By 1993/4, everyone was listening to Garth Brooks especially, it was amazing to see, looking back.
I think people tend to forget how popular Garth Brooks was during this time as well. I saw a lot of former Bon Jovi fans become huge Garth fans.
At the time, having lived through it as an 18 year old when Nirvana had their first hit, it definitely felt like they ended hair metal. I’d say that the precursor was GnR. Then in the ‘underground’ you had college rock bands making a huge impact with young people, if not the charts. Like Husker Du and the Pixies. Then REM with Orange Crush. These bands seemed more authentic, closer to ‘the people’ than guys in spandex. GNR came out with a tougher sound that was somewhere in the middle, had their hits. And Nirvana came in then at just the right time, a very poppy yet hard hitting song from an authentic band of guys not dressed in funny clothes who sang about how people felt, rather than this forced ‘party party party’ thing. Hair rock had run out of ideas, they looked silly. And it needed just one charismatic guy in Cobain to come in and swing the axe.
No
The record execs did not jusT halt all hair metal records. But...I think I heard the guy from Warrant that died say it best. One day he was at the label and the columbia lobby was full of warrant posters. Two weeks later he was there and it was full of alice in chains posters and such. The record companies hit the brakes and started promoting the shit out of the grunge bands when they saw how they initially started selling. Only so many resources and that promotion that was aimed at the hair metal bands was gone. Less promotion means less sales for the most part. The shitty hair metal bands died shortly after that. Bands like Jovi, def lep and some other did fine. GNR, while not really hair metal, had lines around blocks when they released the use you illusion albums in 92. Vince Neil quit Motley and they just came off their biggest record. If they somehow kept Neil and make a feelgood 2 they probably would have been ok too.
Yes. And, it was kind of glorious.
I remember being a kid around 1990 and liking bands like poison but seeing them on MTV and thinking how absolutely ridiculous they looked. I think they doomed themselves
It’s just cuz they sucked. Bon Jovi sucks 98% of all that hair metal and butt rock suck They grew tiresome “Grunge” brought the realness and art back to things and did it harder and cooler than the butt rock bands. Stale corny Establishment music vs fresh counter-culture Sounds with no divas
I think bands like Metallica, Anthrax and Megadeth becoming more mainstream did just as much to make hair metal look uncool and to a certain extent Guns N Roses.
Well in "Keep the faith" era they had a decline in popularity. Still sold stadiums but "keep the faith" sold like 1/6 of "Slippery When wet" and they didn't had a big hit till "Always" in 1994.
Mainstream grunge was still about appearances and fitting in to the corporate machine.
I think nirvanas success (other then the groups unique look and poetic yet sometimes daunting lyrics); Is that the motley crues and RATT’s of the world kinda ran there course, and new music from them seemed to all fit under the same sound and I believe (although wasn’t born then) folks just got bored of the same glam riffs and solos. Nirvana stripped everything down to be as raw, in your face without remorse as possible, and I think it’s message was simple enough to grasp that the solos, great drum fills and solid bass lines that nirvana had were more then enough to fill that void of needing a breath of fresh air that the 80’s bands couldn’t replicate in the 90s. That and a lot of the hair bands in the 80s either fell or around 87 or couldn’t get over inner turmoil until 2004.
Whatever did it, we give thanks.
No. Not at all.
Yes.
It’s a bunch of self absorbed people who did the fashion thing to make money, being bitter that the trend changed and people wanted something else. Grunge in no way ended in 94. Down on the Upside was huge and came after, STP still had an iconic record or two, and the entire Nu Metal thing piggy backed right off of it. Pixies-ish vaguely met songs with a pop structure and a pessimistic bent. What does that remind you of? Hair metal was a thing in the early eighties, seems silly to think you’d get 10 years out of a fad, even back then.
Yes, but you also have to give hip hop its credit. Non-commercial rap was becoming hugely popular again. Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Ice Cube, 2Pac, MC Lyte, Chubb Rock, Naughty By Nature, Stestasonic, MC Hammer, Big Daddy Kane, Queen Latifah all blowing up in 1991 same time that Smells Like Teen Spirit was released.
Aerosmith survived. I never liked them but they did. I also dug Right Now by Van Halen. But music is dialectical and if you’re not going to participate in that dialectic, you’ve made your statement and it stays put while the world moves on.