10 Perfect Glam Rock Albums With No Bad Songs

In the wake of the Summer of Love ending, the rock scene started to go in a few different directions. Along with people adopting the bluesy sounds like Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith, you also had the emergence of what would soon become metal later down the line with Black Sabbath and The Stooges. All the way on the other side of the spectrum, the rock scene was about to start getting a lot more glamorous.

Almost like a reaction to the wild fashions coming from the hippy generation, the glam rock movement began as one of the most in your face genres imaginable, with bands being as androgynous as they could and not making any apologies. Coupled with a fistful of riffs and some killer hooks, this was originally looked at as the most ridiculous direction that rock and roll could have gone in. Once you looked past the get ups though...these bands had some serious chops behind them.

Across all of these records, you can hear each one of these bands trying to push rock music forward, whether that be in updating the old school of rock and roll or bridging the way for some new bands to come to the forefront in their wake. With years in the rearview, this wasn't just a fad. To this genre, image was substance, and it was about to take over the world.

By the time the MTV generation kicked into high gear, the glory days of the glam rock movement were pretty much done. Even though people like T Rex would have absolutely killed it on the airwaves at the time, giants like David Bowie found themselves switching up their styles to suit the more TV friendly image going on at the time. On the heavier side of the spectrum though, we still got a few left turns from Def Leppard.

Considering their last record High N Dry was basically a well produced take on AC/DC flavored rock, Pyromania was going for a much more radio ready feel. Across just 10 tracks, you can tell that Leppard were as much fans people like Mott the Hoople as they were with Van Halen, taking the signature edge of the hair metal movement and putting some genuinely great pop hooks behind it.

Granted, you also have superproducer Mutt Lange to thank for everything turning out this well, disciplining the guys in the band to push their sound even harder to get the perfect vocal takes. Compared to the rest of the hair metal acts that were about to spring up in their wake, Pyromania feels like a glam rock album that just happened to find its way onto the heavier side of the charts. It may be a different flavor of glam, but hooks like these are rarely ever a bad thing in rock and roll.