Filed Under: Appetite For Destruction, Bon Jovi, David Lee Roth, Guns N’ Roses, Hair Metal Bands, Jump, kiss, Lick It Up, Livin’ On A Prayer, Montley Crue, Panama, Shout at the Devil, Slippery When Wet, Sweet, Tom Lorenzo, Top 5 Lists, Van Halen, Welcome to the Jungle

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In the 80s it was all about the hair, the metal and the women who loved hair metal. Many of the bands from the 80s wrote anthems, songs about loners, rebels and songs to make love to your woman to. The music was big, the hair bigger. While we can come up with a long list of the best hair metal 80s songs, just a handful of the bands were epic. Here is a list of who we think are the 5 best hair metal bands from the 80s.

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Van Halen

There was no finer, more flamboyant frontman in the 80s than David Lee Roth. He had the charisma, the style and the moves, making him the complete package. The record 1984 is an all-time classic, with tracks “Jump” and “Panama” among the greatest songs from that era. It also happened to be the last record that featured David Lee Roth. Have no fear, though, the band aptly replaced him with Sammy Hagar; a different kind of frontman, if you will.

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KISS

This band may have been the best showmen of the 80s, and even though you can argue that their peak came in the 70s, what made KISS so great was that they reinvented themselves, by dropping the makeup, yet still wrote some of their greatest hits. The album Lick It Up alone carries them into the Top 5. A different KISS didn’t mean they weren’t the same kick-ass metal band.

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Bon Jovi

We’ve got three words for you: Slippery When Wet. That album alone had three Top 10 and two number-one hits. “Livin’ On A Prayer” still holds its own among the greatest rock anthems of all time, a karaoke classic, if you will. The great thing about Bon Jovi…they may have left the 80s, but the 80s never left them.

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Motley Crue

No band lived the 80s rock star lifestyle more than the Crue. The band has sold 80 million records worldwide and probably slept with just about every woman who came of age in the 80s. They lived the lifestyle, but the music never suffered. Songs like “Shout at the Devil,” Girls, Girls, Girls” and “Dr. Feelgood” all became 80s anthems and all-time classics.

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Guns N’ Roses

Everyone, and we mean everyone, loves Guns N’ Roses. With the hair-duo of Axl Rose and Slash, GnR released the best-selling debut album of all time in 1987 with Appetite For Destruction. Singles “Welcome to the Jungle,” “Sweet Child o’ Mine” and “Paradise City” stand today as all-time greats.

Tom Lorenzo is a freelance writer and journalist from New York City, covering sports, music and pop culture. You can follow him on Twitter @TomLorenzo.

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