10 Most Underrated Mötley Crüe Songs

How can you really narrow down the entire concept of hair metal? Even though you had acts like David Bowie and T. Rex making a name for glam rock years before, it wasn't until Van Halen that the glammified version of rock and roll first started to click overseas. If we're talking the moment where it became real though, all signs point back to the Crue.

Clad in 7 inch heels and some of the most horrific makeup you had ever seen, Motley Crue embodied everything decadent about the Sunset Strip, with songs that sang of the glories of rock and roll excess...most of the time. Outside of their big hits from their glory years, there are a lot more sinister songs bubbling up from underneath the surface. From the early days when they didn't have a penny to their name to their elderstatesmen phase as kings of California, every one of these songs could've been any second rate hair metal acts' greatest hit.

As it stands though, they all seemed to get pushed to the side, in lieu of the audiences that wanted to hear songs like Wild Side and Kickstart My Heart for the 900th time. If you're feeling curious as to how the Crue really gets their kicks, these are the dark stories that you don't hear about.

In the grand scheme of the Crue's classic period, you can't fault them for being honest. Throughout most of their career, the band has said that Theatre of Pain is one of the weakest albums that they've ever made, saying that Smokin in the Boys Room and Home Sweet Home are the only ones worth revisiting. If you listen to the opener though, they may have been just a bit too hard on themselves.

While not coming close to measuring up to the normal blues standards, City Boy Blues is definitely a much grittier look for the band at the time. By twisting around some of his favorite power pop riffs from around the same time, the groove that Nikki Sixx came up with here is a lot more sinister than you would expect, especially when you pair it together with what Tommy Lee is doing behind the kit.

When you look at the band from around the same time though, you wouldn't really expect something all that nasty to come out of a band that looked like they just got done wearing their glam rock Halloween costumes to play their show. Even though this may have shown the Crue having a little bit of an identity crisis, some of that lingering darkness from Shout at the Devil wasn't tapped out just yet.