In what year did pop-metal "die" in your opinion?

Oh cool a third thread in 48 hours where da croupier says "hi axl"

cake

anyway, in 92, mtv was still playing hella def leppard, extreme, damn yankees, saigon kick et al, so 1993

Aerosmith's Get A Grip came out in '93 and was spinning off Alicia Silverstone videos well into '94, does that count?

mtv played hella?

You can see the difference between Adrenalize and Retro Active, where Def Lep went from glammy arena rock (1992) to dressed down post-grunge hard rock (1993) like immediately

lol why did you fight the fun, whiney

Beavis & Butt-head were kind of a more confrontational fictional metalhead case study than Wayne & Garth since they were wearing AC/DC shirts and getting annoyed at wacky 120 Minutes videos from '93 to '97

but what about Korn?

When was Def Lep's last big US hit? If it was the LAH soundtrack then 93.

1992 was the last gasp of pomp. in 1993, the whole Aerosmith/nu-Lep/Ugly Kid Joe/nu-Jovi contingent was just dressed-down, no hairspray hard rock for oldsters. Guns N Roses was an arena anomoly with no peer

#ott

i remember feeling really pissed and stunned by the success of the "let's get rocked" single/video. like watching nixon in '68

voted 94 because it had a presence up until about then, but 93 would probably be slightly more accurate

Bon Jovi never stopped having hit records fwiw

93 was candlebox. dunno if that's a point one way or the other tho

1994 was the year of Troublegum, as owned by every British/Irish person who was a teenager that year, whether they like rock/metal or not

this probably does not sway you greatly

http://vimeo.com/28367129

lol

Yeah, UK pop metal stayed popular into 1995 iirc. Therapy?, Skunk Anansie et al.

That's more like regular rock music tho, Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, Cranberries etc.

yeah in the use therapy and skunk anansie were marketed as alt rock to cmj readers

in the u.s.

this is more a question of "when did pop-metal change from glammy-Mutt Lange-ish-hair-metal to post-grunge-and-nu-metal" right? cuz "metal" never really left the pop charts.

it partly depends where you were. in the SoCal suburb I was living in there were still a lot of metal kids until about '94-ish, when a lot of the heshers/stoners/skaters started switching over to punk or grunge. but metal never really went completely out of style in certain parts of say, Iowa or Ohio

and grunge kind of replaced metal to some people, but it kind of just blended in with the metal radio format for others

It was like late-92/early-93..

Despite that Aerosmith & GNR had hits throughout '93..

Def Leppard had a big ballady hit in the UK as late as 95

Rememeber thinking even then that it was very out of place unlike 92 or even 93

The ballads were not really along the same lines as "Talk Dirty To Me" or "Dr Feelgood"

When the pop-metal rockers disappeared, this was a sign that it was truly dead

or I guess I should say, grunge 'killed' metal for critics/hipsters/geeks in about '92, but for a lot of people (out in the suburbs, and smaller towns) it just kinda blended in with it until maybe the death of Kurt, where there was even more of a clean break into this new format

yeah Headbangers Ball normally mixed-in the grunge with the Pantera/Tool/Helmet as well as the old school stuff, so it would make sense if they all blended together for a lot of people

whiney and i have had a few convos about what bands got played on 120 minutes AND headbanger's ball but i don't remember if there was a dedicated thread for that

Crowbar

well I remember, maybe in '93?... there being this tour with Metallica, Suicidal Tendencies, Danzig, and Alice in Chains, which was pretty much a perfect representation of metal radio at the time

I mean "pop metal" never dies. You'll find successful examples in every year. You guys are splitting hairs. Pop metal as something that could support Aquanet and spandex and Saigon Kick dies as an enormous pop movement in 1992. The smart bands like Def Leppard and Bon Jovi and Aerosmith turned into casual hard rock bands, with nothing that scans as "glam" or "arena" or "gauche" and did fine fpr many years later.

xpost: alice in chains were def marketed to the metal kids. so were soundgarden.

i think this refers to more traditional pop-metal .. there isn't really anything "metal" about "Cryin" or "Deuces are Wild"

"pop metal died when the first kid said / pop metal's not dead." - not david berman

all of Jovi's hits in the 90's and beyond were ballads, besides the stuff that sounded like "It's My Life" which was a Max Martin song IIRC

http://www.spin.com/articles/myth-no-2-nirvana-killed-hair-metal

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2010/04/metallives.html

REALITY: It was already dead. Blame Queensrÿche.
Truth!

the "glam" aspects of bon jovi always seemed grafted-on anyway. if you take the hairspray away, it still sounds like a 3-chord version of springsteen/meat loaf.

Al (sitcom) wrote this on thread "I'm here next to you in silent lucidity" on board I Love Music on Dec 18, 2002

the best was the first article in TIME about the "Seattle scene" in '91 and literally the only bands mentioned were Nirvana and Queensryche.

hah they forgot Heart and Hendrix

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,975142,00.html

forgot about Queensrÿche. yeah they were def a big part of that late-metal atmosphere in the early '90s

The smart bands like Def Leppard and Bon Jovi and Aerosmith turned into casual hard rock bands

"reverted" you mean

def agree pop metal as a movement was fading pre-nirvana, but i can't put the croak moment before Slaughter's The Wild Life.

man I remember this song getting played all the time back then

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA7J1vzHF_Q

apt title

if you take the hairspray away, it still sounds like a 3-chord version of springsteen/meat loaf.

does anyone remember MTV doing a 'new music revolution' ad campaign around maybe the summer of '92? that was when they finally switched to airing mostly/only current clips in video rotation, and was probably (deliberately?) the moment when they finally purged those old Cinderella and White Snake videos from the air and really killed pop metal

question for people who were in l.a.: what was the atmosphere on the sunset strip like by the early '90s? was it sort of a last-holdout for crue-ish metal (and strippers/groupies) or were the clubs already booking a different breed of bands?

On Bon Jovi's roots (and how they differed from other hair metal, etc), fwiw:

http://www.rhapsody.com/blog/2011/11/slippery

is ILX the sort of place where those people would hang out?

metal during this era, from what I remember:

groove metal - Infectious Grooves, Pantera, Sepultura, Prong (?)
metal-as-hardrock - Danzig, GnR, Damn Yankees
prog metal - Queensryche, Dream Theatre, Saigon Kick?
thrash-gone-soft - Metallica, Megadeth etc
grunge metal - Alice in Chains, Soundgarden
funk metal - King's X, Living Color, Faith No More
late-hair/pop - Slaughter, Jackyl, Enuff Z Nuff, Ugly Kid Joe
post-hardcore>metal - Helmet, Rollins Band

+ whatever hangers on from glam metal

(this just being all just the mainstream/radio stuff - leaving out death, black)

i feel like Warrior Soul's cover of "Interzone" by Joy Division is important somehow ITT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYdhagaLRlA

about 2:50

was it sort of a last-holdout for crue-ish metal (and strippers/groupies) or were the clubs already booking a different breed of bands?

*cough* JANE'S ADDICTION *cough*

RHCP too

okay, those bands never really went away though

i mean they were contemporaneous with those other bands and probably had the same drug dealers, etc

JA was around from '87 to what, '92...? which is definitely the tail end of the hair metal era. they were contemporaneous with GnR more than anyone else

if you take the hairspray away, it still sounds like a 3-chord version of springsteen/meat loaf.

Read that as 'Springsteen Loaf' and that sounds like something that would exist. Like Hamburger Helper.

with a side of Fleetwood Mac & Cheese.

p sure Springsteen pinches us a new 5-star Rolling Stone loaf every few years

i feel like there was a last gasp somewhere between 'the wild life' by slaughter debuting at #8 in april '92 and warrant's comparatively disappointing sales for 'dog eat dog' in late summer of '92 (which debuted decently but didn't "hit" like the slaughter album did.)

As an alt-rock kid who got himself oriented in the radio landscape of '95 forward, it's funny, I had to pick up this whole history secondhand but certain things never slotted in accurately - - like, Jane's Addiction was still getting massive radio play on the alt-rock station so it would never have occurred to me to group them in with anything but their seeming "peers" who, in retrospect, actually didn't sound very much like them at all. It was a matter of image and radio programming moreso than sonics, which is why I like some dude's observation about MTV just deciding not to play a bunch of older videos and thus sealing the coffin of a genre in the imagination of whoever came up watching MTV after that point.

happened sometime after the release of airheads

hm, come to think of it most of the 'metal dudes' shows/movies, save for the first Bill & Ted, came out in the '90s (B&B, Airheads, Encino Man, Wayne's World). even Point Break was kind of edging into metal dude territory - but it was def more early '90s Janes Addiction/RHCP style by then. metal dudeness def extends into the '90s, in its own way

i also like some dude's point, cuz i see the death of this sort of stuff as something that grew up within it, not really as a blow struck from outside. what made guns & roses notable as a pop metal band, in my mind, was that they didn't really look or act like one, at least not as observed from the outside. they dressed more or less like regular dudes, with no overt makeup or kiss-style costuming. same was true of metallica. and they were relatively dark (metallica being much more overtly dark, of course). even when gnr sang "welcome to the jungle", there was an alice/jane's-anticipating spectre of sickness and despair hanging over it that wasn't really part of pop metal's stock in trade. the darkness of these bands came to seem "substantial", and it carved out space in heavy pop for the likes of jane's addiction, nirvana, soundgarden, temple of the dog and so on.

i first heard skid row's slave to the grind in early '91, just before nevermind hit (but not before everyone was talking about it). sounded heavy, bleak, raw and stripped down relative to their debut. remember thinking at the time that party glam was over. so my answer is '91. the year slave broke.

question for people who were in l.a.: what was the atmosphere on the sunset strip like by the early '90s? was it sort of a last-holdout for crue-ish metal (and strippers/groupies) or were the clubs already booking a different breed of bands?

Yes and No. I remember that the booking at the Roxy and the Whiskey went nearly 100% alt-rock, with occasional nods to bigger bands doing expensive "an evening with" type shows. But the Troubadour, The Rainbow, and Gazzarri's were still trying to Honour The Toast Of The Town.

In the late 90s, something happened and the Troubadour became the alt-rock-indie venue and not much happened at the Roxy or Whiskey anymore. I don't live in SoCal now, but are there any good shows at the Roxy or Whiskey anymore?

i mean, as a song, this still is pop metal by 80s rules, but the production is much tougher and heavier than the general run of such stuff, the riffing more brutal, and there are so many "alt/underground" touches in the video: grungy industrial setting, mexican-style jesus t-shirt (touchstone image in that moment), suggestions of death & violence, ordinary dude outfits (s bach excepted, of course).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAb3lovDp2c

As contenderizer mentioned, most of them went the Rob Zombie/KMFDM route, usually the lesser bands.

Here was Shotgun Messiah in 1991, already trying to undo the glam:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYUjDi0xKPQ&feature=related

..and here's Shotgun Messiah two years later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idlhdB-UAjk&feature=related

ahhhh wow, that's a pretty amazing transformation!

http://sleevage.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/exposedpantera7.jpg

As contenderizer mentioned, most of them went the Rob Zombie/KMFDM route

well, that's giving me too much credit, but good point! success of ministry w the mind is a terrible thing to taste and psalm 69 was another nail in the coffin, another lesson in how experimentation, real heaviness and pop hooks could comfortably coexist. the latter album came out in '91, along w nevermind, slave to the grind, soundgarden's badmotorfinger (w "outshined" and "rusty cage"), temple of the dog, metallica's black album and the first lollapalooza festival. slayer had been putting out albums on american for several years at that point, to increasing acclaim. ritual de lo habitual and facelift, both released in '90, were still slowly growing in popularity and influence. though it was released in '89, faith no more's the real thing wouldn't peak on the charts until late '90. body count and white zombie's first major-label album would drop in '92. '91 was the year, and grunge wasn't culprit. truly popular alternatives to LA-style "pop metal" were emerging everywhere.

oops, i lied. psalm 69 was '92, apparently. the "jesus built my hotrod" single came out in late '91 though.

Doctor Casino OTM several posts up. I started paying attention to radio and MTV in late '93 or so but didn't really start listening to a lot of rock stations until around mid 1994. I can attest that by that point, glam metal was almost totally gone from MTV and, at least in the Boston area, rock radio as well. And things pretty much stayed that way for a good five years. As an early adolescent you pay as much attention to image as to the sound of the music itself - or at least I did - and when I actually saw a couple of glam-metal clips, probably no earlier than 1996 or so, they seemed unbearably, grotesquely tacky to self-conscious teenage me. More than that, they felt like ancient history.

Interestingly, though I quickly became an "alternative" rock fan along with most of my friends, the first rock tape I ever purchased was Get a Grip. At the time it never occurred to me that Geffen-era Aerosmith were at least ancestors-turned-peers of the hair bands. I mean, "Rag Doll" could be a Poison song. As for many of the putative alt-rockers, which in the industry's conception circa 1994-96 meant any salable rock band, Stone Temple Pilots would've been glam a few years earlier (after all, Scott Weiland went or attempted to go Bowie-glam just as the bottom was dropping out of the alt-rock bubble), and come-latelies like Candlebox and Collective Soul basically were glam or at least pop-metal sans the now-unfashionable visuals.

Alice in Chains...when they were glam:

http://www.bringbackglam.com/journal/2008/5/1/diamond-lieto-alice-in-chains.html

http://www.bacus.net/alice/images/diamond.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSzOgzRtRQs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm8pp-dt7u4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOVyuKdkvuw

And back when Layne was leading a band called...SLEAZE:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD4uqy0e6V4

Nirvana vs. Alice in Chains

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjS3F8ZyIto&feature=g-vrec&context=G262ada2RVAAAAAAAABw

p sure it died the year Winger put out their grunge album.

if we are talking about the 80s/MTV-specific iteration of 'pop metal,' I would go with 93. That seemed to be around the time that those bands stopped trying to push back & began trying to assimilate in mostly hilariously misguided ways.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Poll won by people who never got laid in the 80s

I thought of a date and went and looked it up.

With that statement on February 28, 1996, Tupac Shakur introduced the original Kiss lineup (in full makeup and Love Gun-era stage outfits), to a rousing ovation at the 38th Annual Grammy Awards.[81]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r_hwDLSUhA

http://www.spin.com/articles/no-alternative-40-songs-grunge-killed-hair-metal-myth/

omg, yes. thank you. why didn't I remember this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWOLkwAWX5o