Loudwire Says These are the Ten Best Hair Metal Bands

It’s been five whole days since we had a list to argue over, and I don’t know about you cats, but I’m going through debate withdrawal.

Luckily, Loudwire has now released a video (bottom of this post) in which they count down the (allegedly) Ten Best Hair Metal Bands. This is a subject about which I’m most passionate (as we’ve said many times before, hair metal was the gateway drug for both Vince and myself — as if our names didn’t give that away), so I have to say, I violently disagree with running order of the list, which is as follows:

10. Dokken
9. Whitesnake
8. Cinderella
7. Poison
6. Ratt
5. Skid Row
4. W.A.S.P.
3. Twisted Sister
2. Def Leppard
1. Mötley Crüe

Huh? Where the crap are Guns N’ Roses? Quiet Riot? Warrant? Extreme? “Here I Go Again” is a classic, but Whitesnake were inferior to at least three of those bands.

Given that the original Skid Row line-up made three albums which still hold up pretty well today — something almost no other hair metal band can say about their oeuvre — and earned the respect of the non-hair metal metal community (remember, they toured with Pantera!), don’t they deserve to be much higher?

In fact, let’s be real: there is no universe in which W.A.S.P. was ever better than Skid Row or Ratt or Cinderella. In fact, I’d argue Poison wrote better songs, and I say that as someone who is fully aware of how ridiculous Poison are. But if you ask me, the proof is in the pudding: go to a non-hair metal show sometime, stop a kid who looks like he wasn’t alive in the ’80s, and ask him to name three W.A.S.P. songs and three songs by all the bands below W.A.S.P. on this list. If the kid can name any W.A.S.P. song that isn’t “Animal (Fuck Like a Beast),” I will write something nice about Thy Art is Murder. That’s how sure I am that they won’t be able to do it. W.A.S.P. made a big impact on people who lived through hair metal, but they’re already practically lost to history. The thing for which they’re most famous, in fact, is inarguably the infamous Chris Holmes pool interview from The Decline of Western Civilization, which doesn’t really speak well of their music.

Anyway. Those are my feelings about this list. Feel free to share yours in the comments section. You are, of course, free to disagree with me, but you’ll be wrong. Just sayin’.

[via Bring Back Glam!]