Dear Hair Metal Bands,

I’ve been notic­ing that, for some crazy-ass rea­son, you’re mak­ing a come­back on that radio sta­tion that I hate to lis­ten to but have to hear when I’m in the car with my wife and kids. You know who you are, you Def Leop­ards and you Whites­nakes and you Poi­sons. I’d even throw in Twisted Sis­ter, since I keep hear­ing “We’re Not Gonna Take It” on that sta­tion and even on com­mer­cials. What’s up with this trend?

It’s prob­a­bly some “our core demo­graphic was in junior high or high school when these songs were orig­i­nally pop­u­lar, so to make them feel young again and increase rev­enue through adver­tis­ing, let’s give them the songs that were cool when they were kids” thing. Like that whole Bea­t­les Rock Band game and the “Oh God, Patrick Kennedy is quit­ting the House! What will we do with­out a Kennedy in gov­ern­ment?” thing.

But man, I hate this music. Its corny fac­tor, the lame “Eight­ies kids” being a demo­graphic of buy­ers of this crap. Hair metal was silly in 1985, why would it be any dif­fer­ent now? When you look at some of these bands’ web­sites you see that they’re just a bunch of old guys try­ing to hang on to what­ever they had 20 years ago. They prob­a­bly want the same things they got 20 years ago too: teenage girls and booze, which, if they were 20 years younger, wouldn’t seem so creepy and gross. Of course now they’re like Bad Blake from Crazy Heart, sleep­ing with mid­dle age to early AARP aged women that used to be the teenage girls they slept with back in 1985 and play­ing in venues that 20 years ago they wouldn’t want to be any­where near.

So all of you hair metal guys still try­ing to hang on (I’m also look­ing at you, Enuff Z’nuff). Man, get new lives. Rein­vent your­selves. No one would fault you. Even David Lee Roth and Dee Snider tried radio gigs. There are oth­ere things in this world besides your hit record on pop radio 20 years ago. Give it a shot, it could work.