Hairspray, spandex, make-up, and long, teased locks were all marks of the hair band era in the Eighties. Excess was also a key element, whether it was in the guitar riffs or the bouncing around on stage during music videos. A lot was never enough.
The hair bands made a lot of great music in the Eighties and nothing was better than a heartfelt power ballad from these colorful bands. It is hard to pick just a handful, and several bands had numerous terrific ballads from which to choose.
Ballads are usually thought of as being romantic, but they are often about emotions, whether that emotion be love, loss, loneliness, pain, or something else. Ballads usually are more narrative than most rock songs; they tell a story that pulls you into whatever emotion the song projects. This list is very subjective, and not based on tangible things like sales or charts, but a good ballad will usually do well in those areas because they can touch many.
Are these hair band ballads among your favorites? Do you know all the words? If so, don't hesitate to just sing them out loud!
Top 10 ballads by hair bands in the Eighties
No. 10: "Save Your Love" - Great White
Rock with a bluesy undertone was the signature sound of Great White and set them apart from some other bands in the Eighties. The album Once Bitten was their third record and the first which led to commercial success.
Released in 1987 at the height of the Hair Band era, it produced two hits. "Rock Me" peaked at 60, and "Save Your Love" hit 57 on the charts. Again, these numbers are hard to measure as far as popularity goes because Great White had songs all over MTV.
Of course, two years later, off their album Twice Shy, Great White hit number five on Billboard with "Once Bitten, Twice Shy." "Save Your Love" is a pleading love song, as it is delivered with a longing that is hard to miss. It is a powerful ballad and a great way to start off the list.
After the turn of the century, when hair bands had a resurgence in popularity, Great White never seemed to get enough love and attention. Part of it may be due to a devastating fire in 2003 in a Rhode Island nightclub that killed 100 people during a pyrotechnics display by the band. Fans may not give this band the appreciation it deserves and that deathly fire has to be a reason.
No. 9: "Is This Love" - Whitesnake
Whitesnake released its self-titled seventh record in 1987, and it produced their first true hits on the charts after making music for a decade.
Their previous album, Slide it In, is well known by rock and roll fans, but it was by no means a commercial record. It was filled with raucous, suggestive songs like the title track and "Slow and Easy." Rockers loved it, but there was no way it was getting radio airplay.
The band changed tact for the Whitesnake album. There was a conscious effort to make their sound more commercial and they used videos to push the music. They crashed upon the scene in 1987 with the number one hit "Here I Go Again," a bluesy tune heavily influenced by Led Zeppelin musically and vocally. Lead singer David Coverdale even looked like Robert Plant!
The video really pushed this song to the top. If featured actress Tawny Kitaen dancing on sports cars in a white, diaphanous dress in all sorts of poses. It worked. Between the sexy video and the sultry vocals and violin bow across the guitar strings, the band had a hit on their hands.
They followed that up with the release of the ballad "Is This Love," and they did not mess around with their recipe for success. Kitaen returned in this video, only this time, dancing around an apartment, sometimes with Coverdale and sometimes without. It was a brilliant marketing tactic and it worked wonders. "Is This Love" peaked at number two, giving the band back-to-back Top 2 hits.
No. 8: "Heaven" - Warrant
At the tail end of the Eighties, Warrant burst into the hair band scene with their debut album Dirty, Rotten, Filthy, Stinking Rich. It featured three top 30 songs on Billboard, including two ballads. "Heaven" reached as high as number two during the late summer months of 1989.
Featuring Jani Lane's sweet vocals and bleach-blond hair, this love ballad is definitely aimed at the female demographic. The band followed this hit up with another top 20 ballad, "Sometimes She Cries."
Maybe to prove they were still a rock and roll band and not strictly a ballad band, they bounced back with a lewd, crass, old-fashioned rock song "Cherry Pie," off their album of the same name. That song peaked at number 10, but they still could produce good ballads. "I Saw Red" and "Blind Faith" both solidified their ability to write great ballads.
Heaven gets the nod here for a couple of reasons. It is a fantastic love song that almost hit number one, and all of the other ballads by the band were released as singles in the Nineties.
No. 7: "Home Sweet Home" - Motley Crue
In 1985, Motley Cure released Theatre of Pain. It was the band's third album, their first since breaking out with Shout at the Devil two years earlier. Unlike their more raw, edgier work to date, Theatre of Pain had a poppier vibe than its predecessors.
The album also featured their first true ballad, "Home Sweet Home," a melancholy tune about life on the road as a touring band, according to bassist Nikki Sixx. On the heels of their top 20 remake of "Smokin' in the Boy Room" by Brownsville Station, "Home Sweet Home" was immensely popular, although that wasn't evident by its numbers on the Billboard Hot 100.
In 1985, according to Billboard, it peaked at 89, then at 37 in early 1991 and 1992. However, it was a smash on MTV, holding the number one spot for most requested videos for 14 weeks, according to Totally 80's. In fact, MTV had to change their rules, only allowing songs to be number one for a maximum of 30 days. There has always been a disconnect between Billboard's numbers and reality, and here is a perfect example.
"Home Sweet Home" made it acceptable and profitable for hair bands to do ballads.
No. 6: "Wanted Dead or Alive" - Bon Jovi
Like the previous entry, "Wanted Dead or Alive" is a ballad about the travails of living life on the road for long periods of time. It was one of many hits from the band's third album Slippery When Wet.
Few rock bands have enjoyed as much success as Bon Jovi for as long. Loudwire lists them as the sixth all-time highest-selling Hard Rock or Metal artist with almost 150 million in sales throughout the years.
Slippery When Wet is the band's most popular album ever and spawned three top 10 hits, including two number-one songs. "Wanted Dead or Alive" reached as high as number seven on the charts.
Their next album New Jersey produced the number one charting ballad "I'll be There for You," but for raw emotion, "Wanted Dead or Alive" is the stronger song. The former is very much a romantic song and some may prefer it to the latter, but "Wanted..." featured some of Jon Bon Jovi's strongest vocals and Richie Sambora's best little guitar riffs.
Bon Jovi has been on of the few hair bands that has continued to make music oveer the last 40 years and it is songs like this that keeps audiences dialed in.
No. 5: "Bringin' on the Heartbreak" - Def Leppard
Before Hysteria, there was Pyromania, and before Pyromania, there was High 'n' Dry. This 1981 release was much rawer and unpolished compared to the next two albums, though it did deliver one truly fantastic track.
Hysteria was an incredible album, producing six, count them, six (!!!) top 20 hits, including the raucous "Pour Some Sugar on Me," which reached number two, and the ballad "Love Bites" which hit number one. Pyromania featured three top thirty hits, including two top 20 smashes.
What makes this so interesting is that during the craze that was Pyromania, "Bringin' on the Heartbreak" charted as high as 61 in 1984, three years after its album High 'n' Dry was released. It still has to be considered one of Def Leppard's best songs. It's powerful and gut-wrenching. and it rightfully received some attention when the band hit it big.
Def Leppard has a number of pretty good ballads, but "Bringin' on the Heartbreak" stands above the rest.
No. 4: "Don't Know What You Got (Till It's Gone)" - Cinderella
Cinderella burst onto the scene in 1986, with their debut album Night Songs. They immediately hit it big with metal fans with terrific rock songs like "Shake Me" and "Somebody Save Me," but it was their power ballad "Nobody's Fool" that drove the audiences.
The band had a heavy blues influence in most of their songs, and "Nobody's Fool" was the epitome of this style. Tom Keifer's vocals were spot-on in this angsty ballad. It drove up the charts and finally landed as high as 13th on the charts. It was really hard not to have this one on this list.
Instead, the more romantic offering from Cinderella's next album gets the nod. "Don't Know What You've Got (Till It's Gone)" features Kiefer's brilliant vocals which illustrate the longing for loss, of messing up by not appreciating what you have. It is a beautiful song that almostmost everyone can relate to in one way or another. It was also piano-driven musically, rather than by the usual rock band guitar, showing the band had a softer side.
This beautiful ballad ended up being Cinderella's highest-charting song, highest-charting on the Billboard charts. While they did enjoy some modest success with later ballads like "Coming Home" and "Heartbreak Station," "Don't Know What You Got..." stands alone at the top of a pretty good archive of blue-based rock and roll.
No. 3: "Alone Again" - Dokken
Dokken will never be accused of being a ballad band, as they did very few of them. Known for heavy metal rock tunes like "Breakin' the Chains," "Into the Fire," and "Just Got Lucky," they did produce one fantastic one on their 1984 album Tooth and Nail.
"Alone Again" features Don Dokken's soulful voice and George Lynch's subtle riffs to produce a feeling of loss and loneliness familiar to almost everyone. The song talks about the inability to make things right, and how lost he feels. It
Dokken never had the commercial success a lot of bands in this era had, but rock and roll fans of the era know how good they were. Maybe a lack of that commercial success was because they didn't cave and fill their albums with always popular ballads. Their biggest success was probably "Dream Warriors," which was the theme of Nightmare on Elm Street 3.
This song may be a surprise to some, and maybe more unfamiliar to others, but it is a powerful ballad that deserves a high place in the Best Ballads of the Eighties list.
No. 2: "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" - Poison
While "Alone Again" may surprise some, "Every Rose..." should shock no one. Few bands embraced the excesses of the Eighties more than Poison, but they also had a string of incredible ballads mixed in with all of the glamour, pop metal that was so popular late in the decade.
"Every Rose Has Its Thorn" was a major departure for a band that embraced the big hair and spandex like Poison did early on. When Look What the Cat Drug In was released in 1986, they were completely into the make-up and the hairspray. Some, like Motley Crue's Nikki Sixx, thought they were copycats.
He said as much in an interview with Kerrang in 2019: "I have to say that I don’t think that Nirvana and Pearl Jam killed the bands you mention, I think that they killed themselves. They were making copycat music."
This is a pretty unfair statement by Sixx in that Poison and Warrant did a lot of good music themselves, although by the end of the decade, there was a lot of copying of bands in general and that led to the desire for something different.
"Every Rose...," however, was a well-marketed song, via the video. Lead singer Bret Michaels is featured sans the make-up, in blue jeans and a cowboy hat, on a stool playing an acoustic guitar for most of the video. Like a lot of ballads, it portrays love, loss, regret, and loneliness. It reached the pinnacle, staying number one on Billboard for three weeks, and made stars out of Poison.
Poison has as many fantastic songs as just about any other band of the era, and had four top six songs. They became more than a copycat band.
No. 1: "Sweet Child 'O Mine" - Guns N' Roses
If you were to ask people who were fans of the Hair Band era if they remembered the first they heard Guns N' Roses, there is an excellent chance they would. GNR was that transformative. They would never, could never, be accused of copying anyone.
With a unique vocalist who is easily distinguishable from all other singers, and a unique lead guitarist who is easily distinguishable from all other guitarists, GNR had no peers. They had a sound, a power, that was all their own.
While the band caught everyone's attention with their first release off their debut album - the raw, hit-you-in-the-face rock anthem "Welcome to the Jungle" from Appetite for Destruction - it was the somewhat softer "Sweet Child 'O Mine" that thrust the band into the consciousness of rock and roll fans.
It's also such a different ballad than anything on this list, at least musically. While it still portrays the same emotions as other songs, it is set apart, not only by Axl Rose's soft and silky, then roaring, and soaring vocals, but by a fantastic intro and a nearly two-minute guitar solo bridge. That riff is one of the most recognizable guitar riffs in the history of music, and it leads to Rose's spectacular vocal ending to the song.
It is a brilliant piece of music and beautifully written and produced. Unsurprisingly, it soared to number one and made the band one of the most recognizable acts ever. The band eventually produced five top-10 hits before self-destructing. They may be the biggest rock and roll "what if" in history. They were the quintessential shooting star that blazed brilliantly, but briefly.
"Sweet Child 'O Mine" is the greatest rock and roll ballad of all time, for the Eighties, or any other era.