Grunge - how did the '80s hair metal bands react?

also doesn't Bobby McFerrin commit suicide in the Don't Worry Be Happy video

Whatever. Not trying to be cranky -- and pop music did sound pretty celbratory though much of the '80s, one of the things I liked about it -- but there were counter-examples everywhere. And even a lot of the celebratory stuff had a underside that didn't seem quite so optimistic. Lots of paranoia songs, for one thing. (Rockwell, the Police, Men At Work, whoever.) And by 1987 -- hardly the end of the decade -- you had GnR and P.E. and a big album by Metallica, too. ("The Message" was 1982, and it wasn't alone then.)

I think that upbeat idealism and hedonistic fun were a large part of what the broader audience who bought those Madonna and Michael Jackson records was hearing, though of course there was more nuance there if one listened for it.

Any generalization about an entire decade is going to have many exceptions, but what I'm saying isn't terribly novel. Many observers at the time commented on it: The "Daydream Nation" of Sonic Youth's album title. The bafflement of liberals at the hypnotic effectiveness of Reagan's pied-piper act. The alienated subcultures of goths and pig-fuckers who mocked the sunny mood of the mainstream. They were reacting to the same feeling.

one of the only parts about "fargo rock city" that i thought was really good was when klosterman was talking about how you always read that in the 80s everyone was living under some cloud of nuclear war and fear, and he was like "i don't remember even caring or thinking about it as a kid"...i was the same way, none of that stuff seemed real at all, i just wanted to play with star wars toys and ride bike and stuff

I was a kid in the 80s and was totally freaked out about nuclear annihilation - but then I had parents who were part of a anti-nuke group and let me watch stuff like The Day After and Testament

but yeah my emotional/general memories of the 80s boiled down to "wow shit is really terrible what is everybody else so goddamned cheery about"

culturally it really seems its closest analog is the 50s - this outward facade of wide-eyed optimistic consumerism papering over paranoia, racial tensions, etc.

Pretty sure little kids in the '60s, '70s, '90s, and '00s mostly just wanted to play with their toys and ride their bikes, too. (I dunno, maybe a day or two in mid-September 2001 might've been different, but then again I lived in New York.)

It's possible I'm letting my personal experience color my view of the decade, because I was pretty much just a kid in the '80s, so naturally things would have looked different to me if I had been an unemployed rust-belt autoworker or something. But it does seem like there are lots of examples that fit the overall pop-culture trend narrative of mid-'80s optimism giving way to late '80s/early '90s grit and realism.

i think you are right. lots of stuff was hidden from view. there was a definite party in the ruins vibe too. rome before the fall. i was miserable and worried about the bomb and my heroes were joy division, crass, and others like them. so, i was not the norm.

i got all my news from subhumans u.k. lyrics.

i remember lots of talk of nuclear war and how evil the soviets were but i never once thought it might happen.

Grew up two miles away from a primary target - general attitude among the kids was "if it happens, whatcha gonna do?"

I was in the Army for four years in the middle of the decade, setting up communication rigs on hilltops within spitting distance of the East German border, so it seemed real to me. I mean, "99 Luftballons" was a really fun song and all, but it wasn't only fun. (The Clash seemed really big with soldiers at the time, as far as I could tell.)

i was definitely paranoid during the 80's. might have been the coke though. i thought it was pretty evil overall. the reagan sunny 50's thing hiding all the repub evil. and moving to philly in the late 80's during crack fever and homeless epidemic just confirmed all my worst fears about everything.

The '80s were the beginning of the end. That's all so obvious now.

Yeah, I don't remember ever being scared of nuclear war, either (even though I recall in the mid-80s seeing a poll where kids reported it as their #1 fear), but then I was born in '79 and always figured it was the kids just a few years older than me that would've been more cognizant of it.

i was born in 73 and thought it must be older kids who were worried.

http://www.international.ucla.edu/media/images/gilmoregirls3-lrg.jpg

does bryan adams get played on country radio too?

There was a Crossroads crossover show with him and Jason Aldean doing each other's hits -- with Aldean it's "hits" since his songs haven't yet been as successful. There are some similarities, although Aldean's more a Bad Company
copyist.

I was born in 73 and thought it must be older kids who were worried.

Maybe. I played this game a few times, never got very worked up over it. Three Mile Island, which was 50 miles to my west in '79, was far more 'interesting' for a short period of time than potential thermonuclear bombardment.

http://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2006/07/ultimatum-how-i-learned-to-stop.html

I was born in '74 and tried to build a bomb shelter in my parents' basement. But they wouldn't buy me 1,000 sandbags.

I was born in '73 and had nightmares about nuclear annihilation. But I just embraced GWAR and Ministry and hoped for the best Mad Max-style dystopia possible.

does bryan adams get played on country radio too?

he does in Canada.

i think there is a law though.

It seems that there were a lot of darker currents in popular music and culture in the late '80s/early '90s, or maybe it just seems that way, since the '80s Reagan years were an unusually sunny time for pop culture. But it wasn't just in rock with grunge supplanting pop-metal, you also have gangsta rap (NWA, Ice-T, Cypress Hill, etc.) supplanting fun party rap, the cartoon violence of '80s action-comedy movies being supplanted by the grittier, more realistic violence of Tarantino, etc.

― o. nate, Friday, December 18, 2009 12:30 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

= me getting all possessive over lame CW truism

So, in what sense did "punk-influenced indie/alt culture" not already exist in the '80s again? (Not even gonna touch the silly "cartoon pop idols" stuff. As if '90s idols were any less cartoonish.)

The 80's were like John Hughes films and Rambo and Rocky sequels on one hand and shit like Blue Velvet on the other hand. New kids on the block and Van Halen on one hand, Appetite For Destruction and NWA on the other hand.

The 90's were more like Forrest Gump on one hand vs Pulp Fiction and Goodfellas on the other hand. Oasis, Barenaked Ladies and En Vogue on one hand, and Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, and Radiohead on the other hand.

I think the biggest cultural differences between the two decades are reflected in television. Married with Children, Roseanne, Seinfeld and the Simpsons vs Family Ties, Cheers, Night Court, Alf.

In the 80s, we all loved OJ. 90s not as much.

One reason I don't buy what you're saying, contenderizer, is that even within what you call "alt culture" it didn't look particularly gritty, and grunge was just one concern among many. Sure, RHCP and Green Day were punk-influenced, but they weren't "no-nonsense"---they pretty much celebrated nonsense! And that's just to look at the hugest bands of the era---when I remember listening to alt radio in the 90s I think of novelties like "Flagpole Sitta" and "Banditos" (and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" too). That was a 1990s for a lot of us---and even the jam bands you mention were pretty far from having authenticity fetishes as I understand that term---the Spin Doctors fit right into the pop novelty culture I loved, as did Blues Traveler, and Phish has always been a goofy pop band.

I mean, you can focus just on the "serious" sides of all these bands, or just point to Alice In Chains or Soundgarden or the album cuts on Doggystyle or whatever but I don't see the pop 90s as anymore "serious" than the 80s. It just had a different bunch of goofballs.

i very distinctly remember when I first learned about nuclear war, it was from a drunken uncle of mine, I had to be about 10 or maybe 11 at the oldest, and I completely freaked out, went for a long walk by myself afterward, terrified, and had nightmares that night. that would have been around 82

On which side of the "serious, artistic"/"cheesy, happy, pop" divide did the "like a prayer" video fall? And which decade was it? late 80's or early 90's? Seriously, don't remember.

It is interesting though that people remember the 80's as a cheesy decade and the 90's as an uber serious one. I wonder why that is.

Interesting. Like jaymc, I was born in 1979. I totally remember being terrified of nuclear annihilation as a kid, of genuinely thinking the world was fundamentally twisted for a Cold War to even be possible.

(I listened to Michael Jackson and Bon Jovi FWIW.)

I think that second "of" should be left out of that sentence.

I have an a piece on this in the current issue of Spin btw (didn't notice all the comments until just this second, though):

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

― xhuxk, Friday, December 18, 2009 10:07 AM

OTM and thanks for making me feel just a little less alone on this one

But Bret Michaels has been a judge on Nasvhille Star and is supposed to be on Hillary Duff's imminent "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" cover

every rose was never anything BUT a country song!

the difference between the naive goofiness of the 80s and the dark seriousness of the 90s is one of scant degrees, imo. it's not like the universe was suddenly upended or anything. but it's fairly easy (and in the way of all gross reductions, inaccurate, but i think still useful) to reduce the 80s to a time of willed innocence. the pop of the 80s, as exemplified by madonna, prince and michael jackson, was about fantasy characters that did not inhabit the real world. they were exaggerated, dramatic, "cartoonish" and unashamedly silly. they lived only in and on TV.

(there are of course a MILLION exceptions to this paper-thin rule. the countervailing fashion for rootsy authenticity, for instance. but bear with me for a minute...)

this naivete is typified by "new wave", american pop's saleable version of punk: devo, the cars, the b-52s, talking heads, blondie and even the go-gos. and by the john huges and steven spielberg films that reshaped the era's cinema.

the first inklings of a hard new sensibility were felt, i think, in the mid-to-late 80s in a number of pop niches. in the indie/alt underground's "just folks" resistance to capitalism and corporate cooption, in guns n roses & metallica's rejection of hair metal drag, and in gangsta rap's emphasis on thug hardness & street cred.

indie culture took great pains to announce that its performers and their art were not commercial confections that arrived from on high. they were the product of the creative imagination of people just like you (this has always been the case for all artists & art, of course, but the mythology of indie alt music stresses this, while the dominant mythology of most 80s pop tended to distance the performer from the audience - again, imo). "flying the flannel" & "book yr own life" are the purest reductions of this ideology imaginable. what guns & roses & metallica did was similar. metallica was quite clear about the meaning of their dress, its identification with the "real fans" and its opposition to MTV's "phony" hair metal ethos. same goes for the street/thug hardness of gangster rap. gangsta staked its entire identity on authenticity.

all of these pop subcultures produced music that took pains to present itself as "more real" than mainstream pop, and they seemed to be embraced by fans in that spirit. were they really more real? of course not, and that's not my point. my point is that the dominant mythology of 90s pop, as it was born in the 80s, was centered around a narrative of realness, of truth.

each of these subcultures bloomed out in the 90s, and in the process became more cartoonish and distorted, but retaining the essential mythology of their realness. and i think this realness fetish persists in pop, though it hasn't been so dominant for quite some time. (compare here the james bond movies of the 80s with those of the present day.)

my point is that the dominant mythology of 90s pop, as it was born in the 80s, was centered around a narrative of realness, of truth.

and yeah i think the dominant mythology of 80s pop was a sort of "laugh while the world burns" faux-innocence. to the extent that this was not true (as in the "rootsy authenticity" farm aid business i mentioned above), pop's real person interaction with the real world was conducted in a spirit of wide-eyed earnestness and goodwill. in the more cynical 90s, this would become a tortured punk howl - a much more teenage version of real concern. and maybe that's the key i'm missing. it's not so much that the 80s were fake and the 90s real, but that the 90s seemed built around this teenage rejection of the presumed fakeness of the 80s. That coupled with an embrace of a rather juvenile vision of the real, one predicated either on angst & toughness (rap & nu metal), or on indie-style "artistic seriousness" (which would really take off in the 00s).

This isn't meant to explain everything. You could build an equally valid 90s counter-narrative around boy bands and the continuity of "prefab" pop, but that doesn't really discredit what I'm talking about. There's always more than one narrative unfolding.

xp haha yeah!

I dunno; I get that you're constructing a narrative, but it's not the only one, nor do I see any reason to think it's the "truest" one.

E.g. it's hard for me to see what Metallica authentically stands for, since they were pretty knowingly cartoonish: it's not like any of them had been strapped to the electric chair or shot up in war. I see that we can move the goalposts and say "oh, I mean their *image*" but e.g. "Trapped Under Ice" is a really FUNNY song and I think the band "meant it" that way; but those are my 80s and maybe not yours.

I don't see where RHCP or Green Day or Weezer fits into the "cynical 90s"; and all of those bands are punk-derived. And all were cartoons and that's why they were appealing!

well, punk comes with the teen-cred "authenticity" mythology built in, no matter what supposedly punk bands do or how they act/sound

this differentiates it from new wave, which has a built-in "we're so fake! isn't it hilarious! LET'S PARTY!" payload

plus RHCP were clearly an outlier wr2 what i'm talking about. an example of there being more than one narrative in play. punkification of pop radio (a la nirvana, green day, sublime, etc) can be taken as a sign of cred-fixated, nu-era teen realness, but also as the development of the next wave of fun rock party music. both make sense, imo.

i probably go overboard in trying to make my case universal. it's just one thread among many, but seems particularly significant to me.

I think there's certainly some truth to the narrative that Contenderizer is proposing; in the 80s thread I was trying to explain why Prince couldn't really make it from the 80s to the 90s, and Contenderizer outlining nicely the sort of trend changes that were the cause of this. I think Prince really is a prime example of an artist failing to adjust to these sort of changes. He exemplifies many of the trends of 80s pop/rock people have mentioned above: the "party while the world burns" attitude (for which "1999" was practically the anthem), the colourful playfulness and a certain detachment from "reality", postmodern roleplay and continous changing of images and personas (the ultimate example of which is blending of gender, something which he did with his "Camille" tunes). But when the 90s came, "realness" (as outlined by Contenderizer above) became a much more important in popular music, as the dominance of grunge, gangsta rap, etc prove. Prince tried to adapt to that, in the early 90s he tried to assume a tougher, more "real" hip-hop image, but no one really took it seriously. His artistic image, his persona(s), was so much tied to those 80s ideals of a pop star that he couldn't really turn into a 90s star.

Now, Western popular music has never been an monolithic field, of course there are always a lot of exceptions to be found to any sort of simplified narrative, but I do feel there was some sort of a general paradigm change between the 80s and the early 90s (which of course was tied to larger social changes such as the end of Cold War, global recession, etc), and fall of artists like Prince was at least partly due to this. It's worth noting that out of the triumvirate of 80s megapopstars, i.e. MJ/Prince/Madonna, only Madonna managed to keep her popularity throughout the 90s, and that was partly because she discarded her playful, detached "party girl" image of the 80s in favour of a more serious image(s) and persona(s).

"Contenderizer outlines nicely"

Contenderizer and Tuomas' ideas here suddenly made me think about how skilled Sonic Youth have been at riding these shifts. Particularly in their first 10 years, they were able to project party-while-the-world-burns alongside high-art and street-smart in a way the other NYC noise acts couldn't or didn't try. Just "Death Vally 69" and "Get into the Groovy" shows how they could jump from metallic splatter-film to Pee Wee Herman ironic-naivte. But both are very 80s exercises in "bad taste." They were able to leave that behind in the 90s and get by on their "modern composer" and "DIY rock" personas.

what guns & roses & metallica did was similar. metallica was quite clear about the meaning of their dress, its identification with the "real fans" and its opposition to MTV's "phony" hair metal ethos.

Actually, one big selling point of even DEF LEPPARD, at first, is that they "dressed like regular guys not like rock stars" -- I'm talking real early '80s here. They (and some of other NWOBHM bands) were supposed to be just like their fans. Like, uh, the Ramones or somebody (not that the Ramones actually dressed like their fans -- but we're talking marketing and image here.) Also, TONS of '80s alt/indie rock, from Replacements to Husker Du to REM on down, was supposed to be "regular guy" stuff. That's what the grunge bands were drawing on --- that and all the meaner/schticker/harder edged hardcore and pigfuck bands that were hardly obscure to anybody paying attention in the '80s.

It is interesting though that people remember the 80's as a cheesy decade and the 90's as an uber serious one. I wonder why that is.

Judging from this thread, it's mainly because they were really young in the '80s, and only noticed certain things. And then, in the '90s (biggest musical act: Garth Brooks) they ignored lots of other things.

Shania pretty big too in the '90s, obv. (And if we're talking hair metal to country trajectories, they're both huge. By the way, actually, in the '80s, I observed that lots of the hair metal power ballads -- by bands like Cinderella, say -- sounded like '70s Southern Rock ballads, and also that songs like "Every Rose" and "Wanted Dead Or Alive" were very obsessed with cowboys. So right, country was in there all along.)