Tight pants, big hair, bad music

It's fitting that hair metal got its name from the Barbie doll bad boys in bands like Motley Crue, Poison, and Bon Jovi. The 80s music fad was always more about style over substance. And it was mostly hideous style too, especially the stuff worn by Motley Crue and Poison, and their less-famous Los Angeles mates like Warrant, Autograph, and L.A. Guns, who you would have found strutting along Sunset Strip in their spandex pants, with big hair, and a full face of makeup.

You have to wonder how these guys ever managed to pull chicks when they looked more like girls than the girls.

But, as revealed a few years back in The Dirt, which detailed the lewd and hilarious tales of Motley Crue, the ladies were as much of an ever-present accessory as lipstick and teasing combs.

However, in the early 90s, with the world's stocks of hairspray almost exhausted, the hair band's popularity declined.

So why the reason for this look back to the days when songs like Every Rose Has Its Thorn, Girls, Girls, Girls, and Livin' On A Prayer were top of the pops?

Well, it's because hair metal is back.

As scary as it may seem, it lives on today thanks to Bon Jovi, who tour here in December; Bret Michaels of Poison, who, despite a recent health scare is vowing to still pull chicks on reality-TV and release a new album next month; and, in an unlikely quarter, pop star Miley Cyrus is keeping the hair metal dream alive with her cover of Poison's soppy and sleazy Every Rose Has Its Thorn on new album, Can't Be Tamed. Plus, the naughty minx also guests on Michael's new album.

Even scarier is in recent years the inclusion of band's like Poison, Skid Row, and Ratt on the Guitar Hero and Rock Band video games has sparked renewed interest in these band's music.

I can proudly say I never had Poison twinked on to my pencil case at intermediate and high school in the 80s. It's fair to say songs like Nothin' But a Good Time and their cover of Your Mama Don't Dance off 1988 album Open Up and Say... Ahh! were ghastly and trashy.

In his book Watch You Bleed, about the life and times of Guns N' Roses, writer Stephen Davis calls Poison's music and style "toxic glamour", which pretty much sums it up. He also remembers Michaels as "unusually pretty" back in the day, and while these days he's "unusually plastic", you have to hand it to the guy. Off the back of one hit song, because let's face it Every Rose Has Its Thorn is the only one anyone remembers, Michaels has become one of music's biggest reality-TV stars.

His show is now in spin-off mode with Rock Of Love: Charm School (which screens here on C4), where contestants from the original show get an etiquette makeover from head mistress Sharon Osbourne, and he's got a new show based on his everyday life called Bret Michaels: Life As I Know It, which, if it was 25 years ago, might be interesting. But now? Not so much.

But of all the hair metallers it's Bon Jovi who are the genre's enduring success story. While some of the blokes from Motley Crue can barely stand up on stage, Bon Jovi are as big as ever, having recently played a 12-day residency at London's O2 Arena with more than 250,000 tickets sold.

You could argue, and I would, that Bon Jovi are not really hair metal at all. They're from New Jersey on the East Coast of the US for starters, and they have more classic rock tendencies, and a Bruce Springsteen sensibility, than anything similar to the garish glam of the hair bands.

Yet they were lumped into the hair metal scene, and looking back at the video for Livin' On A Prayer from 1986 you can see why. Jon Bon Jovi not only had big hair, it was fluffy too, and then there were the leather tassels, not to mention the anthemic pomp of the song.

I love Livin' On A Prayer, and 25 years on it still gets all the girls (and most of the guys) dancing and singing along at parties - no matter how cool they are. Because everybody likes to get a little slippery when wet.