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NOTES FROM THE MARGINS A Love Affair with Hair Metal: Kitsch, Irony and Posterity [5 May 2004]
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by Audrea Lim
Poison
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My name is Audrea and I'm addicted to hair metal. There, I've said it. There are few things that can rile up my biologically low levels of testosterone in the same way as good, old- fashioned, cock rock. There is a special place in my heart that will always be reserved for power ballads, and of course there is something about the sex, drugs and rock 'n roll lifestyle, so characteristic of hair metal, that is kind of romantic, albeit in an exceptionally sleazy way. I'm not the first to own up to this guilty pleasure and I sincerely doubt I will be the last. The further we move away from the 80s, the more people seem willing to come out of the closet on this one. The first step is always the hardest: admitting that you seriously listen to music based on an overused template of chord progressions, dense with cheese-infused lyrics and performed by ridiculously-dressed people with absurdly-teased hair. As metal with pop-sensibilities, hair metal is caught in the limbo stage between the earlier, musically respectable metal it grew out of and the MTV-driven, image-based pop music of the 80s. What results is a genre of music that isn't taken seriously in rock history books and that is generally seen to exemplify bad music. However, I don't like hair metal despite all this but because of it. I wasn't old enough during the hair metal craze to have been exposed to it then, so that now when I listen to Poison or Warrant and watch their videos, it is from an entirely different standpoint than those people who actually experienced it at the time. The poodle-style mullets and the ball-crushingly-tight pants amuse me. I constantly think to myself that they couldn't possibly be serious and that there must be a level of irony involved. But at the same time I can get caught up in the catchy melodies and sexually-explicit lyrics, and then find myself actually enjoying it. It may seem that the majority of people that listen to hair metal either seriously rock out to it or find it hilarious, but this is perhaps a crude method of categorization, for the same features of music can illicit very different but simultaneously occurring reactions in us. My experience of hair metal is a case in point. The first of these reactions is to tell myself that I am somehow above enjoying kitsch, and as a result I don't allow myself to become completely immersed in the sounds. Instead, I experience hair metal from a distance and as a joke. Here it is easy to laugh at the sheer stupidity of some of the lyrics and the metaphors used to represent the experiences of love in power ballads. More importantly, though, is the fact that I listen to it within a de-contextualized environment: a cultural context that is totally different from the one in which hair metal originally thrived. Because I only know of '80s pop culture through what is passed down to me in archival material like movies, there is a sense that what I see and hear of hair metal bands is foreign to me. Furthermore, in the years that have passed since the (virtual) death of hair metal, the style and mannerisms that are characteristic of the genre have been sufficiently mocked and satirized in pop culture that my every experience of hair metal occurs in light of these jokes. I can't listen to hair metal without remembering all the ways in which it has been made fun of and, as a result, I can find humor in it from visual imagery alone. Musical styles exist within a larger context of pop culture in which commentary and criticism of the style can occur (i.e. through movies, television, etc). As these secondary sources proliferate, we are less able to experience the music minus their influence. Styles of music are transient, and it becomes more difficult to directly experience them in that way as they pass into history. It is through this process that genres of pop music come to be regarded differently from the way they are originally experienced. This is the way in which I came to enjoy hair metal as campy fun. However, despite the previous reaction, I find myself actually liking the music. Although time dates styles and makes them seem unfamiliar, kitsch presents us with what is familiar, and hair metal is a fine exemplar of kitsch. This is where my love for power ballads comes into play. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera writes: "no matter how much we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition". In spite of my criticism of hair metal as kitsch and my constant attempts to guard against it, power ballads still speak to something inside of me that yearns for schmaltzy tunes (of a hard-rock styling) about unrequited love. It's an embarrassing truth, but a truth nonetheless. From time to time I need music that has no surprises: that has a simple melody based on the most-overused of chord progressions and instrumentations, with lyrics that are not profound in any way but which speak about crazy love or the need to rock. It seems a folly to insist that kitsch has no effect on us, for after all, so much of our pop culture is defined by the stuff kitsch is made up of. Pop audiences are fickle, so pop culture styles are always changing, but our occasional need for familiar harmonies and lyrics is constant. As a result, pop audiences always want kitsch in one form or another, and it is because I too am susceptible to it that hair metal can be seriously appealing. Presumably, the members of Whitesnake or Twisted Sister never thought their music would be experienced in this way 20 years later, nor did their fans. Justin Timberlake makes music the way mainstream audiences today like it, and indie rockers subsequently criticize it as vacuous and formulaic. That criticism is probably valid, but I would be lying if I claimed that his songs aren't catchy and sing-able. His kitschiness will probably translate for future generations, and those that criticize him now may admit to their guilty pleasures in due time. All music cultures are transient and will change beyond recognition or die away eventually, so gestures in pop culture and subcultures may come to be viewed by posterity as ironic when they were actually sincere (how much longer can we take candy-ravers sucking on pacifiers seriously?). The further we evolve from a particular cultural trend, the less we are concerned with the social or political ramifications of what it represents (the corporate takeover of the music industry, for instance). As a result, our criticisms of these trends in mainstream music may be diluted with time as people become less attached to tribal pop culture loyalties. It's easier for me to admit to liking hair metal than JT because hair metal is more or less neutral in today's culture, whereas JT is still popular now and therefore culturally charged. That is, he still emblematizes corporate pop for us today. Time de-contextualizes figures and trends in pop culture, so that it is possible for us to see them differently, and then maybe even appreciate them for what they are. Whether that is genius with failed image or kitsch with flash, those artists can be enjoyed without the political-social-cultural hype that surrounded their rise to fame in the first place. Everyone has their guilty pleasures, but the shame goes away as the trend dies down and we age a little bit more. It is with posterity on my side that I can stand up with teased hair and rock out to the worst of them.
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