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Who ended Hair Band craze?


realtree71

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What ended the hair band craze was hair metal turning into a caricature of itself, people being fed up with that, and the emergence of grunge which was seen as the anti hair metal music. The clearly marked turning point was nirvana coming out with teen spirit.

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btw, as for which hair metal band was responsible for the death of hair metal or at least personified what everyone started to dislike about hair metal, the band that always comes to mind for me is nitro. I've also heard other people mention pretty boy floyd as another one.

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btw, as for which hair metal band was responsible for the death of hair metal or at least personified what everyone started to dislike about hair metal, the band that always comes to mind for me is nitro. I've also heard other people mention pretty boy floyd as another one.

 

 

Neither of those bands were anywhere near popular enough to have impacted Hair Metal's standing.

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Nirvana.

 

And countless hair band guys have said that. There is story after story of hair band guys seeing the Nirvana "Smells Like Teen Spirit" getting mega-airplay on MTV and knowing it was over. All pictures of hair bands were pulled down overnight at MTV offices and up went anything from Seattle.

 

Best story regarding Nirvana killing the cash cow for hair bands comes from hair band manager Doc McGhee. He managed Motley Crue, Bon Jovi, Skid Row and made a huge fortune during the hair band days. In the new "I Want My MTV" book he admits it was Nirvana that did in the hair bands and the way he tells it is funny as hell. He prefaces his story by saying that, yeah, he feels bad for guys with mental issues and is very sympathetic to suicide victims, but then he says that if Kurt had committed suicide just five years earlier he'd have about fifty million more in the bank!

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Neither of those bands were anywhere near popular enough to have impacted Hair Metal's standing.

 

 

Agree. They were barely blips on the radar screen.

 

It is hard to imagine any single band being hated and blamed for the death of hair metal than Warrant. If there is a band even more hated and to blame, I am not aware of it.

 

Nirvana and grunge had nothing to do with it.

 

They just happened to be the bands that were present NOT doing the hairband thing when people got sick of hairband music.

 

People weren't so much running TO grunge as they were running away from hair metal.

 

It could have just as easily been polka music that took it's place, but it was just natural that what took it's place was what many people considered the opposite of hair metal, but that was still rock.

 

Ok, so maybe polka is a stretch, but you get the point.

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Nirvana and grunge had nothing to do with it.


People weren't so much running TO grunge as they were running away from hair metal.


 

So let me get this straight, Doc McGhee the king of hair band management says it was Nirvana that killed off the hair bands, but we should take your opinion over his (and over just about every hair metal guy interviewed).

 

Nirvana had nothing to do with it? Man, that is without a doubt the most hilarious thing I ever read.

 

And, where in hell you get this idea that people weren't running to Nirvana rather they were running away from hair bands. By saying people were running away from hair bands you are implying that EVERYONE was into hair bands. That's kind of wrong, don't you think? People flocked to Nirvana because at that time the popular music scene was hair bands and real bad hip hop. Hard core rock fans were waiting for something to grab on to. Nirvana and Seattle came along and gave music starved fans some real, gritty rock and roll. WE RAN TO NIRVANA! Simple as that. We wanted a piece of them before they disappeared or became another commercial commodity.

 

Dude, read some interviews with hair band guys. To a man they all say Nirvana put the knife in hair bands. I have no idea where you are getting your ideas.

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Neither of those bands were anywhere near popular enough to have impacted Hair Metal's standing.

 

 

This.

 

on the hair metal end... I'd say that the decline started with Warrant. This isn't to say Warrant was any worse than the droves of other hair bands... but they were the beginning of the end. The most popular of the first wave of overhyped, cookie cutter, "cash in on the hair band fad" bands. Warrant, unlike their contemporaries, i.e. Winger, Slaughter, Bulletboys, etc... (I leave out Skid Row and Tesla because they were actually decent bands) they had the right combination of cheesy songs, looks, studio musicians, and record company support to become mega popular... opening the doors for the truly horrible bands of the day... Trixter, Firehouse, Steelheart, Pretty Boy Floyd, Tuff, and the like.

 

I'd agree that Nirvana helped kill of the scene... and possibly dealt the death blow... but alot of other bands worked the crack they eventually split wide open. Metal guys were already into Soundgarden and Alice in Chains, and Mother Love Bone had quite a few fans among the hair metal crowd. In the years prior to that, select "alternative" bands had made headway into the scene... Faith no More, RHCP, Jane's Addiction, Primus, Nine Inch Nails, etc...

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The public generally lost interest because towards the end of the 80s, record companies were overmarketing and throwing so many bands into the spotlight, whether they deserved it or not. Yes, there were many, many great bands to come out of that scene, but we generally forget the ones that sucked when those are the bands that caused the genre to go into decline. Take Nitro for example. They got a major label deal and made a complete fluke out of it. And on top of that, there were tons of madiocre hair bands (Roxxi, Hurricane, Jailhouse, Lion, Shark Island, Shotgun Messiah, Roxx Gang, wild boyz, southgang, etc.), it all eroded the audience's interest because it had been so watered down and processed. Bands like Warrant, that produced several top 5 singles had absolutely nothing to do with killing hair metal, because they captured the audience's attention without record companies forcing it down their throats.

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