Hair Metal

To me, hair metal is a genre that is fun to listen to for a while. That while could be a few songs or a couple of hours, depending on how good the metal is. I like a good amount of the metal we listened to in class. I think that the wave of hair metal was really just wave of music that is primarily supposed to be fun and exciting to listen to. Like punk, music was used to escape from the stresses and pressures that everyday life creates. With more stress, the demand for a temporary escape grew and this could have led to this uprising. It also could have just come from an interest in the genre. One of the major stylistic techniques used in hair metal is tapping on the guitar that is used during solos or any other time really. I think that Van Halen used it very early on in the genre's first wave. Listen to the beginning of this:

It is when he uses his right hand on the neck of the guitar. I was interested when I heard that Van Halen popularized this around the same time as hair metal.