Hair Metal

Anthems like Mötley Crüe's "Girls, Girls, Girls," Skid Row's "18 and Life," and Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It" made for some classic MTV video hits, while groups like Bon Jovi and the Scorpions transformed the power ballad — perhaps the most potent weapon in hair metal's mighty arsenal of charms — into a vehicle for slow dances at denim-heavy make-out parties. Get a hair cut! Just kidding. Shake those rockin' tresses through to Next Steps.

With hair metal, the culture of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll that took flight in the '60s and '70s reached its inevitable apex in the '80s, exploding like a fireworks display — and what a display! Everything was high: the hair, the scissor-kicks, the voices, the volume, the dudes in the band . . . the audience. And we wouldn't have had it any other way. Relive the hirsute glory with Rick Santers, Triumph, Brighton Rock, and their well-toussled cohorts. Screw the ozone layer — your hair needs the ultimate spritz of our Deep Cuts.

Was it a reaction to disco? Was it Reaganomics? Was it Wall Street? Pundits and critics don't seem interested in dissecting the whys and wherefores of hair metal. This suits the genre perfectly: nobody knows why it happened, but we're all glad that it did. So lose the thinking cap, or any other headwear for that matter, and CRANK IT UP with the likes of Aldo Nova, Helix, and Annihilator.

Nothing quite defines the '80s like the leather 'n' lipstick phenomenon commonly referred to as "hair metal." Like the decade itself, the music/scene was pure, unadulterated excess. Ostentatious in presentation and performance, politically vacant, and cartoonish in all aspects, it was a gleeful wardrobe malfunction, a makeover gone haywire, a loudly exclaimed hair don't — and we loved every last second of it.