Top 10 hair metal videos

10. Boyz Are Gonna Rock
Vinnie Vincent Invasion

This video is pink. It's very pink. The clothes are outrageous and the hair is big, even for 80s hair metal. At the end, after a killer guitar solo, vinnie grabs his double pointy guitar and smashes up the tower of speaker cabinets. Finally, the drum kit explodes - this is particularly impressive, because unlike amplifiers, a drum kit isn't actually plugged into high voltage power, and neither does it contain any sort of volatile compound. The only remaining scientific explanation for seeing it combust into fire, glitter and sparks is that the preceding 4 minutes of 80s metal extravagance was just too much for it. Awesome.


9. Freewheel Burnin
Judas Priest

Leather.. spikes.. spandex.. and video games? Some young kid is playing an arcade racing game, and drives well enough to summon an incredible display of 80s metal and laser beams, which proves that there is nothing so awesome as a misspent youth. Before we are left to ponder whether the processing power of those machines was really adequate for such audiovisual shenanigans, Glenn Tipton launches into a furious guitar solo, causing every leather jacketed teenage male in the arcade to bang their heads as they shoot down aliens or eat some dots. The only thing that could make this better is if KK Downing had the perm he sported on the Electric Eye tour.


8. Yankee Rose
David Lee Roth

The introduction to this video takes almost as long as the song itself! A convenience store clerk deals with a number of bizarre customers, culminating in a facepainted, spear carrying DLR asking a donut ("to go"). Then the song starts. Steve Vai and Billy Sheehan spin their axes around about six times each. Roth does a high kick about every six seconds. I lost count of how many different pairs of pants they each wear. There's a reason they don't make these videos were made only in the 80s.. using that much hairspray at one time would now be considered a Climate Change Event. The video ends on a surprisingly understated note, with helium balloons released to the sky.


7. Back for More
Ratt

This starts when a chick with a great rack puts some coins into a juke box to hear some Ratt (now why can't i meet a girl like that?) Then Juan Croucier and Robbin Crosby show up and drive off with her and her friend, presumably to engage in some manner of intercourse. Unfortunately for our intrepid bass and guitar shredding heroes, they are dragged from their vehicle and beaten by two cheerfully violent members of the Los Angeles constabulary (played by Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee from Motley Crue). Meanwhile, Stephen Pearcy and Warren Demartini seem to be having better luck with the ladies they've rescued from the dude in the suit at the diner, though eventually all ends in tragedy when some toothless weirdo rides a motorcycle into the rock club and destroys everything.

6. I Wanna Rock
Twisted Sister

This one makes the start to Yankee Rose seem abridged. After excoriating a young dude in denim for shitting himself, Dee Snider vacates the screen for a whole minute. We cut to a classroom, where the teacher from hell shows his anger that the same young dude would draw a Twisted Sister logo onto a defenceless text book. The teacher asks, famously, what the young man would like to do with his life: he, of course, wants to rock. Cue the music - the band return and in a series of mishaps cause pain and embarassment to the bowtied teacher, in poetic retribution for the harshness of his rule. In the final indignity, the teacher crawls to the principal's office, only to find that his boss also wants to rock.


5. Youth Gone Wild
Skid Row

This clip is mostly in back and white, and there's concrete everywhere. This is to let us know that these guys really are from skid row, where the clothes have holes in them and it's a struggle to afford enough conditioner. A crowd bursts through a remarkably loose concrete panel, and although it's never explained what they're angry about, it does seem a great pity they never get around to actually breaking shit.


4. November Rain
Guns N Roses

How do you even start to explain this clip? Axl is in an opera house, and then he's marrying some chick. A strung out lookin slash forgets the wedding rings, but then one of his buddies hooks him up, and he ambles up to hand em over. But the wedding is clearly a drag, so he goes outside to play some licks - fair enough i think, the reception is where it's at anyway. Except this one is rained out, and the glasses get broken, and Axl's chick dies. It's such a heavy trip that they end up playing in the opera house again, which is just as well because Slash's flannelette jacket would probably seem a bit out of place at a burial.



3. Nothin' but a Good Time
Poison

This one's sorta got a story to it, with the disgruntled dishpig dealing with a fat boss in a suit who just doesn't understand rock and roll. But once the music starts, that's all forgotten about, and it's just the boys rocking out. And they do it well.. for all the costume and instrument changes, and the impossibly choreographed moves, what really comes across from all 4 stage members is just a natural and exuberant stage presence.



2. Cherry Pie
Warrant

This video is really white.. everybody is dressed in black and red.. but not a lot of black and red.. and there's a firetruck.. and girls getting sprayed with firehoses.. and a convertible with a 'WARRANT' number plate.. and Jani Lane's crazy teeth. There's a bit where he's in bed with a chick, and it does have a real connection to the lyrics of the song, but mostly I think he just wants us to know that he's getting some. That's it really.


1. Girls Girls Girls
Motley Crue

Nikki, Vince and Tommy take a break from dressing up like girls so that they can spend the night riding Harleys, flashing knives, hitting up titty bars and forgetting to shave. It's just about the most awesome video in all of Hair Metal, and therefore in the history of all recorded music. Mick Mars is in there somewhere, but even back then he still looked like he'd been dead since January, no matter what the month. In Nikki Sixx's Heroin Diaries, it's revealed that Nikki forced the director to drink copious quantities of Jack Daniels as he shot the clip, which makes this Glam Metal masterpiece all the more remarkable.