Glam Metal

Glam Metal is a music sub-genre that emphasizes poufy hair, makeup, and overall glamour excess. They originally targeted the female audience with their looks and the male audience with the music. But it evolved to gain a more broad audience, with the ever changing looks and music of these bands. One such evolution was the power ballad. This type of song starts off slow and continues to gather speed, up until the climax of the song. Essentially the power ballad can be attributed to two songs, “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin and “Love Hurts” a cover by Nazareth.

Glam Metal started in the early 80’s on the Sunset Strip in LA. It became the most commercially successful subgenre of metal. In general, the Metal genre is considered outsider music. It is generally not found in the mainstream of American music. Much like many other subgenres, Glam had scenes on both the east coast and west coast, usually New York and California respectively. The east coast had bands like Twisted Sister and Bon Jovi. The west coast had bands like Mötley Crüe, Poison, and Quiet Riot, to name a few. Their music was influenced by bands like Van Halen and Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, and The New York Dolls. While the genre wasn’t necessarily defined by their music, their visual influences were.

With most metal bands, the live show is where they flourished. Their shows included videos, smoke, pyrotechnics, and all mannerisms of special effects on stage. But what ultimately gave this genre the commercial success was Music Television. MTV a brand new medium where the visual side of music could be shown internationally. These bands jumped at the chance to be on TV and launched their careers. Because these bands cared of what they looked like, they were very popular with the female audience. The first band of this genre to break it big was Quiet Riot. They were the first metal band to have their album, Metal Health, go to #1 on the charts.

Around the 90’s when the music scene was shifting, many of these bands either endured, took a break, or disbanded entirely. The bands that have endured or have reformed are now mostly thriving on their past material. Since the turn of the century, some of these bands have recorded new songs and put out new records. Most are just performing as nostalgia acts.

There is a big discussion on the name of this genre, and that is either Glam or Hair Metal. I don’t like the name hair metal because it gives the connotation that it’s only about the persons’ hair or appearance that they have. Where glam gives the genre a broader definition to classify the music. Although it has been said that GLAM stands for “Gay L A Metal”, that doesn’t really fit because all of the bands were targeting the female audience. But then again, that name came from the animosity between the other metal subgenre that came around the same time with similar influences, Thrash Metal.

In the end, I believe Glam Metal music is pop dressed as metal. It does have its merits and deserves a spot within the heavy metal genre. I believe that it’s a great starting point for those who want to check out metal music. But ultimately, this is only one part of Metal music.