The 20 greatest hair metal bands of all time

The hair, or glam, metal bands of the 1980s remain one of the true guilty pleasures in music history. The hair spray, makeup, and catchy pop tunes touched up with distortion were made for MTV.

Though there really wasn’t much substance to the music, the scene was popular to the mainstream. We’ve decided to rank our 20 hair metal bands of all time. 

But before we go on, bands like Def Leppard, Kiss, Scorpions, Whitesnake, Extreme, and Tesla are not on this list. While, yes, some of these groups made massively successful pop-tinged metal albums during the ’80s, they were either already successfully established hard-rock acts before this time and went for some easy money or were unjustly lumped into the genre thanks to MTV.

With that said, here we go.