The Best Hair Metal Album of Every Year From 1981-1991

Our list of the Best Hair Metal Album of Every Year From 1981 to 1991 proves that hair metal — or glam metal, or pop-metal, or whatever the heck you want to call it — had a truly impressive decade-long run.

The seeds for the genre were planted by ’70s hard rock acts such as Van Halen, Aerosmith and KISS. But hair metal’s true opening volley was Motley Crue’s scrappy 1981 debut album, Too Fast for Love. Combining hard rock, power-pop and punk into one sleazy, hedonistic package, it set the tone for the following decade of high-watt, libidinous hard rock.

Before long, the Sunset Strip music scene was exploding with bands that were eager to be the next Motley Crue, and they were courted by record labels eager to strike gold — again and again and again. The next several years saw blockbuster albums from the likes of Ratt, Poison, Dokken, Bon Jovi and many more.

READ MORE: The Best Ballad By 11 Big Hair Metal Bands

You’ll notice a few choice omissions from this list. Def Leppard, despite their dominance throughout the ’80s, came up just short of notching the year’s best hair metal album on two separate occasions (three, if you count High ‘n’ Dry). And although we’ve included Guns N’ Roses on previous hair metal song lists, we simply could not lump their landmark debut, Appetite for Destruction, in with this crop of albums.

On the flip side, you’ll find some bands and albums on here that were only tangentially related to the hair metal scene, which we nevertheless chose to include either because they had a massive influence on the scene or they wiped the floor with all the other albums that came out during their respective years.

To paraphrase Cinderella, another contender for this list: “If you don’t like it, we don’t care!“

Read on to see the Best Hair Metal Album of Every Year From 1981 to 1991.