Some threads in recent days highlighted how non-politically correct a lot of hair metal stars (Axl, Sebastian Bach) were.And contrary to what a lot of history-challenged zoomers think, the entertainment industry has been hard-core liberal since at least the early 60s.So did industry exec's throw hair metal overboard in the early 90s and replace it with almost all liberal grunge as the teenage male loud guitar genre of choice?It's hard to overestimate how much power industry exec's had as taste setters in the 80s and 90s. MTV was literally the national juke box/radio station. If you got your video on heavy rotation, you were going to be big; if not it was over.
>>130209904Hair metal was clearly promoting faggotry and the feminization of men, so your theory falls flat
>>130209916if you called a hair metal member gay, he would have kicked your ass (or at least the ones big enough to do so).Don't be fooled by the poodle haircuts, hair metal was loudly heterosexual. (Unlike grunge, where the stars famously said stuff like they wish they were gay, etc.)**And for the record, I hated hair metal and preferred grunge. But musical quality matters little in terms of sales.
Grunge was good. Hair metal, including GNR fuckin sucked simple as.
>>130210002GnR was better than any grunge act.But generally speaking, hair metal wasn't very good musically .... more interested in image.But as GnR showed, those bands from that scene were starting to evolve into being more interested in the actual musical aspects (before they got the rugs pulled out by the industry).
>>130209979You know that the grunge guys had groupies too, right?
>>130209904They went from based heterosexual men to literal rape victims in like a decade. Sad!
I mostly prefer grunge and don't care for hair metal, but GnR is really great, they had riffs no one else in the genre came close to.
>>130209904If you actually look at who was dominating the charts during grunge's heyday, it just shows that it was never as popular as the revisionist history says it was and was by and large just another music critic circlejerk. What replaced hair metal wasn't Nirvana and Pearl Jam, it was R&B, new jack swing and hip-hop. Even Smells Like Teen Spirit, the most iconic grunge song, could only peak at 7th on Billboard. On the year-end hot 100, it was 32nd, putting it in between Jodeci's Come and Talk to Me and Bobby Brown's Humpin' Around.Gen X rockists have an inflated self-mythology that almost rivals the boomers.
>>130210573They were the groupies for truck drivers. Gas money can't grow on trees.
>>130210766Singles charts sure but grunge bands sold a ton of albums and rock proportionally now is just a fraction of that compared to pop.
>>130210809Rock is more popular now than it's ever been.
>>130210809On the album charts, grunge was usually getting mogged by Garth Brooks and movie soundtracks. Most people just weren't interested in downtuned boomer riffs and vocalists who sounded like they were clenching out a turd.
>>130210866But then Creed happened...
>>130210766R and B existed alongside Hair Metal too.Does anyone know if guitar rock sold better during Hair Band era or in the post-Hair Band, Grunge era? Would be interesting to see some actual data.
>>130210766not at all true. there was lots of white girl pop during this era but it was not R&B slop but singer-songwriter slop like Tori Amos, Natalie Merchant, Jewel, and Sheryl Crow. the white chicks were doing all the "2 deep 4 u" songs about their feels while the black ones were left to do the basic-ass club/party/sex anthems.
>>130210890van halen sold huge. as for the others? utterly and completely mogged by bands like >tom petty and the heartbreakers >e-street band >the cars>dire straits >hall & oatesboth in quality and sales. >>130210866that must be why staind, godsmack and all the other gruff singers took off, zoom zoom! >>130210766>bobby brownwas never huge l o fucking l… guy was married to someone huge. MC hammer was huge.
Anything that made it to radio airtime was only because someone somewhere did a Jewish trick on its behalf
>>130211181>that must be why staind, godsmack and all the other gruff singers took off, zoom zoom! And what was the end result of the industry forcing that drivel all over the radio? The death of rock as the "default" genre and the total takeover of hip-hop for the next 15+ years, not to mention radio itself being replaced by services like Napster, iTunes and Spotify that gave people more control over what they listened to so they never had to hear Chad Kroeger again.>was never huge l o fucking l…You have no idea what you're talking about. New Edition was huge back in the day, and then as a solo artist, Don't Be Cruel was a juggernaut of an album with five top-10 hits, all before he even met Whitney. He actually started falling off in popularity *after* he married her. Just because he was trashy as a person doesn't mean he wasn't a big deal for a while as an artist.
>>130211181your list was for an older audience.hair metal and grunge were more in competition for the early white teen loud guitar market.
>>130210573They both had groupies, so that cancels each other out.One dressed like women while the other wished they were women.
