You think you have to listen to the entire album to hear one song? Or is this a rare case where you genuinely hate every song on it? I agree the album is pretty awful. That's why I just have the MP3 of the one song. But... are you sure you hate that song? When did you last hear it?
For me, cock rock is the same as stripper music. If you can imagine nudie chicks dancing on stage to it, then it just might be cock rock.
I enjoyed Big Empty when it was featured on The Crow soundtrack (which is still a kick ass compilation). Now of course it has been played on the radio more than Stairway to Heaven. I remember going to pick up Purple, STP's long awaited follow up to Core and being disappointed with the entire album with the exception of Unglued. I'll never forget having a difficult time finding that damn CD because the cover gives you no indication what the hell it is. Most of the hits off of Purple find their way onto all of the classic rock stations on a regular basis. I'll take Crackerman, Dead and Bloated and No Memory/Sin over anything released afterwards.
I don't think there's a stripper working today who was even alive when Girls, Girls, Girls was released. Not a point, just an observation.
I use 'hair metal' and 'cock-rock' almost interchangeably when discussing 80s rock n' roll. Aggressive male sexuality personified. Nirvana didn't come to just lay to waste the Ratts, Posions, and Warrants of the time, they also dethroned (or attempted to) Guns N' Roses, which I would place in a different sub-'class' of 80s rock than the former two bands. 'Hair metal' suggests that hair was foremost, which it was, while 'cock-rock' suggests, well, what it suggests. GNR is the latter, Poison is the former, but both are part of the same larger 80s sleazy rock umbrella.
I always saw GnR as the darker side of those scenes though. Hedonistic but aware of the perils of and philosophical about their decadence. I think what set GnR apart from the other bands, musicianship and songwriting aside, was that they were dangerous. Their violence and self-abuse is in a way a bridge to the alt rock takeover of the early 90's.
Here's my contribution to unpopular opinions. In the nineties I was out of the whole hair metal vs. grunge debate. The music that stirred me in the nineties was made with keyboards rather than guitars. some of my favorite bands from then: Meat Beat Manifesto, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, Ministry, Front 242, T99, Controlled Bleeding, Neon Judgement, Orbital, Mussolini Headkick, Underworld (to me the Led Zepplin of electronica), Chris and Cosey, Coil, KMFDM, Test Dept, Severed Heads... To me this was where something was really going on in the nineties. I was into both techno and industrial, which was portrayed in the media as ideologically opposed, but I was cool with that. And when techno was really underground, (very early 90s), it was tied in with the whole cyberpunk movement which made it part of a whole consisting of literature, fashion and lifestyle.
Speaking of hair metal and industrial.... Shotgun Messiah, former hair metal band turned industrial, produced the best industrial album of the nineties:
I saw Ministry at Lollapalooza while they were touring Psalm 69. I recall them playing only four songs (Just One Fix, Thieves and N.W.O. are all long), but they were great.
While I was hard into the whole goth/industrial/no-wave thing from the late 80s into the early 90s. Nothing for me is more 90s than Merzbow: Though, I will sound off in the Nirvana debate that I always thought Soundgarden was the more interesting band from that whole scene.
Hair Metal / Cock Rock / Grunge / Industrial > Anything on the radio today. Drake? Fuck off. Kanye? Fuck off. Taylor Swift? You bet that's a fuck off. The 90's was the lat era of music.
