I'm no expert on hair metal but to these ears it's Cinderella. At least based on the two albums I own: NIGHT SONGS and LONG, COLD WINTER.

Motley Crue was pretty good for awhile.

Liked a few of the hard rock bands that came out in the late 80s early 90s - a bit less pop metal in them - Little Caeser, Four Horsemen, Circus Of Power....dunno if they're hair metal tho' - they were too ugly to be glam.

I was gonna say Motley Crue in the early '80s, or maybe Krokus if those count. If we're strictly talking about when it became MTV glam butt rock like White Lion, Poison, or Skid Row, etc... you can keep all of it.

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NIGHT SONGS and LONG, COLD WINTER.

Yeah, Cinderella was the first thing I thought of. Skidrow had a rocker there towards the end (pf the glam metal era).

I was a pretty big Motley Crue fan when those first couple records came out, but I'd prefer to listen to Cinderella now a days, if I had to choose.

That dude in Cinderella (see, I don't even know his name) has a good rock voice. Yeah, Skid Row; forgot about them. They're #2. :)

I'll throw in some early Ratt. The first Poison record is a catchy one although I haven't listened to it in years. At the time I liked it. I liked the first Stryper ep.

I guess Guns n Roses don't really count, but really they do, so I'll go with their first record as well.

Twisted Sisters' earlier stuff.

I would still go with Cinderella (and Tom Keifer) over any of this stuff, except that first Guns n Roses.

Just downloaded Heartbreak Station.

For sheer musical punch you gotta go with LOVE/HATE. Beside a little too much funky-rock they drove home their desperate message as well as Axel and the boys with a bit more drive and much less Elton Johnnery. Their "lets rumble" tape is a 9/10.

Early Ratts good, as is Tom Keifers paint stripper voice in Cinderella. Like The Osmonds if they had dressed differently they woulda been looked at as more serious. Good rootsey rock and roll on the first couple. The first Crues ok, but after that it was image/pop tunes over all.

Oh yeah early Ratt, the EP with You Think You're Tough and the Aerosmith Cover, and then Out of the Cellar...forgot about that stuff.
Also I'll throw in the first Queensryche EP.

"Also I'll throw in the first Queensryche EP."

Seems like that was a little bit before the hair metal curve.

I'll also toss in Dokken.

"Seems like that was a little bit before the hair metal curve."

You know that may be the trick. The only hair metal bands that were any good were around right in the beginning. The ones that came later were such watered down ballad crap.

LA Guns, Poison, Guns'n'Roses, Faster Pussycat, Dogs D'Amour and some of those other bands had some good tunes, but it's Cinderella for me...

"My Gypsy Road won't take me home". Ha, ha.

I think definitely Ratt, early Twisted Sister, and Love/Hate.

Ratt...nice

jake e lees badlands always got lumped in with the hairbands but were much more 70s influenced, and tesla is actually not that bad.

I'm sorta on the fence as to whether G n' R would qualify--in the early days, they definetely were a hair band, but as Slash says in his book, they weren't really into that and just pretty much did it because the labels and execs wanted every band from LA and the Sunset Strip to look like that. The band has said that they stopped that image because they were lazy and it took too much work. I always thought that Enuff Z'Nuff was one of the more interesting ones....this over the top psychedelic thing--totally ridiculous with the peace signs and whatnot--but they were more of a pop band. They had some well written songs--melodies, harmonies, kinda Beatle-esque. They struck me as a band that got roped into playing that image game too, when if they'd dropped alot of the crazy image, maybe their stuff would have aged better.

The shitty thing is that despite alot of the really bad, slick production and the dated image and everything, alot of bands like Kix probably would have held up better through the years.....alot of straight up hard rock bands went for that thing, and even Jason and the Scorchers unfortunately got convinced to play that game by the time of their second full length....really slick, over produced, over reverbed albums. I can't even think of any of my favorite 70's bands/ artists that made albums in the 80's that didn't have 'em sound like shit (Blue Cheer, Jimmy Page's stuff, Priest, etc)

I'm partial to some of the later hair metal bands like Salty Dog and Sea Hags. RATT have stood the test of time better than most. Their 2010 album Infestation was quite good! I also gotta say that Celtic Frost are responsible for one of the all time great hair metal albums (Cold Lake)!