10 Perfect Albums That Will Make You Love Hair Metal Music

There's no exact way to pinpoint when the hair metal movement started to fall into decline. Some may have pointed to the more artificial sounds of bands like Warrant or Winger making the scene sound ridiculous, or it could have been the moment that Kurt Cobain played Smells Like Teen Spirit, rendering the entire Sunset Strip scene obsolete. If you really wanted to break it down though, Guns N Roses feels like the peak of the hair metal movement and its downfall at the exact same time.

Because as far as Sunset Strip bands go, Appetite for Destruction is one of the more perfect albums to come out of the '80s, putting a Rolling Stones style swagger back into rock and roll with Slash's bluesy riffs and Axl Rose's eccentric personality onstage. As much as Paradise City and It's So Easy may have been in heavy rotation both in and out of Los Angeles, the success of Guns tended to shine a spotlight on the other bands that weren't quite living up to their standard.

Taking a few cues from the punk rock playbook, songs like Mr. Brownstone were more about life in the gutter than outright power ballads, with Guns having their sights set on being the greatest band they could be rather than just having the biggest hairstyles on the block. Guns N Roses may have been the greatest band to come out of the '80s hair metal scene, but once you heard Appetite, you knew that you were never going to go back to a band like Winger ever again.