Blog:The Worst Band (or Bands) to Ever Have a Movie

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It's Mötley Crüe who should've never had a movie, not even a biographical one! They gave '80s pop a bad name, and so did arena rock/hair metal as a whole.

These days, very few people have any use for Mötley Crüe, Winger, Bon Jovi, or Poison. The Whitesnake Fan Club no longer needs a large office. The possibility of White Lion putting a record into the Billboard Top 100 is unlikely.

If you read this on a semi-regular basis and perhaps even occasionally enjoy it, you’ll probably agree when I say that the deaths of arena rock and its subgenre hair metal represent a quantum leap in good taste for humankind.

The 1980s saw the rise of empty-headed, impotent posers who had more interest in hairstyles, drugs, sex, girls, partying, and groupies than music. The decade vomited a whole army of shallow, pretty-boy panderers: W.A.S.P., Bad English, Girlschool, Night Ranger, Lita Ford, Damn Yankees, White Lion, Europe, Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, Warrant, Winger, Guns N' Roses, Poison, FireHouse, Kix, Whitesnake, Cinderella, Nelson, Great White, Saigon Kick, Jackyl, RATT, Mr. Big, Skid Row, Tesla, Dokken, L.A. Guns, Y&T, Danger Danger, Van Hagar, Lynch Mobb, Extreme, Faster Pussycat, Steelheart, Britny Fox, Vixen, and (of course) Mötley Crüe.

Boy, I could go on and on. All of them were horrible and could only communicate at the level of the lowest common denominator, either because that’s all they felt their audience could understand or perhaps it was because that was all they could understand (I choose the latter).

Mötley Crüe set new lows for marginally literate lyrical banalities and clichés and established new Guinness Records in the areas of musical and emotional dishonesty. These bands had only one method of expression: Sentimental masculinity, a stance invented by none other than Journey (who have the dubious honor of being the worst rock 'n' roll band of all time).

It is fair to pick on music merely because it is non-threatening, one-dimensional, and blatantly commercial. It shouldn't be too much to demand that rock music and the lyrics that accompany them be sophisticated, creative, and witty. A rock 'n' roller must challenge his or her audience for his or her art to stay vital, a dictum that should hold true for my art as well. By telling you Mötley Crüe and Bon Jovi were abominable pseudo-pop outfits that took more from the world than they gave, I imagine I’m telling you nothing it doesn't know already.

But this week, I can’t resist.

Arena rock and hair metal are supposedly "superior" on the basis of their lyrical simplicity, as opposed to alternative rock, new wave, and prog-rock’s complexity that challenges the intellectual through their uses of metaphor, ambiguity, irony and convoluted meaning. Alternative rock stars and their fans are accused for being cynical, which in this context must mean that the alternative crowd has the nerve of actually choosing to think.

Claiming that '80s hair metal or arena rock is worthier than today’s music for these reasons is ludicrous. Why on earth would you claim that you’re not intelligent enough to be able to comprehend something deeper than Whitesnake’s breathtakingly poetic "Now you’re gone / I can feel my heart is aching"?

It’s like claiming John Grisham is superior to James Joyce because Grisham utilizes smaller words and shorter paragraphs and deals with concepts a two-year-old could understand. It’s like claiming cartoons are superior to the works of Picasso because cartoonists draw shapes that look like "real things". It’s like claiming television is a superior medium to print because with watching TV, you don’t have to bother to put forth any intellectual effort.

One could counter that '80s rock dealt with political issues. Well, yeah! So what? So did Danielle Steele’s "Message From Nam"! Who cares? Did arena rock or hair metal add anything new to the great store of human knowledge? Addressing social issues does not give your art legitimacy, particularly if addressing them in a banal and hackneyed manner is your idea of deep insight.

The less controversial a cause, the less likely the respective artist will be committed to it. Bad politics (like Sex Pistols' horrifying "Bodies") can sometimes lead to great art; bad art will always lead to bad art, no exceptions.

Personally, I would have loved to have seen Mötley Crüe write a song condemning violence against homosexuals. Now that would have challenged the '80s hair metal audience. Instead, I got a Neanderthal lead singer named Vince Neil. I would have liked to have seen an '80s hair metal video that wasn’t insulting to women, but instead I got a million videos that prominently featured a scantily clad, scorching hot babe preening for the camera.

Rock critics, rock fans, and others capable of rational thought didn’t despise this stuff merely on the basis of its sometimes asinine, sometimes hateful, always stupid lyrics. They also despised it because of the music itself, which took all the elements essential to good rock 'n' roll and puked on them.

Through slick production and assembly line guitar work, '80s hair metal sanded down all of rock’s edges and cooled down all of its fires, turning it into a flimsy parody. It’s standard issue, generic bombast that sounds like everybody else who churns out that tripe.

Arena rock is too radio-friendly and safe in nature, while hair metal has incredibly childish, unintelligent, stupid, and teen-pandering lyrics. No genre is better than the other. They're both horrible. The drums sound fake and there is too much reverb on them, the guitars sound fake and aren't loud or fuzzy enough, acoustic guitars and synths are abused on a lot of songs, both genres are plagued with generic stadium anthems and power ballads, the bands try too hard to be deep and emotional by writing anti-suicide songs, and hair metal isn't even heavy or metal in the slightest.

Motley Crue tries way too hard to be shocking and offensive, and they fail on all levels. Their sound and lyrics are very, and I mean VERY by the book, their lyrics pander to teenagers and are packed with sexual innuendo, they care too much about sex, their songs all sound the same like AC/DC's, they're hard rock instead of metal like they claim they are, and they write power ballads because they sold well back in arena rock's '80s heyday.

Say what you will about alternative rock, but does Nirvana sound like R.E.M., Beck, or Soundgarden? No, not in the slightest. If it weren’t for vocalists, I wouldn’t be able to tell Whitesnake from Bon Jovi from Winger: same guitars, same drums, same clothes, same hair, same blondes populating their videos. '80s hair bands are about as distinctive from each other as Walk the Moon or Neon Trees is to Artic Monkeys. If arena rock or hair metal is the highest level at which you can grasp entertainment, you and I have absolutely nothing in common, intelligence included.

I'm really mad that Mötley Crüe's The Dirt (2019) actually got greenlight by Netflix. What made this rock band even deserve a biographical film when they were already been milked to death by radio and MTV in the past?

Yes, alternative rock is the current trend and it is possible that it will fade as a moneymaker. But it will never fade from rock history; it has already made an indelible mark on musicians, critics, and fans in a way that Mötley Crüe never will. Mötley Crüe just screams "it's made for teens" as much as '90s/early 2000s teen pop smacks "it's made for kids", but these guys do have at least one pro: No auto-tune.

Screw hair metal and arena rock, screw rock cliches, screw radio, screw MTV, screw the "it's made for teens" excuse, screw high production values in music, and screw hedonism. It's better for you and I to listen to folk, rock 'n' roll, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, alternative rock, new wave, classical music, jam bands, or Americana than so-called "nostalgic and unforgettable" arena rock/hair metal.

Credits
Sources: "Corporate rock gave '80s pop a bad name" on Daily Bruin TV Tropes via "Audience Alienating Era" Edited by: Dexter's Mom