Poison’s Unskinny Bop: The Death of Glam

Peaking at number 3 on the Billboard Hottest 100, Poison’s Unskinny Bop marks glam’s final death rattle before Nirvana’s Nevermind scorched the Earth. The inspiration of this entry is when I looked up Poison today and found that Unskinny Bop, the group’s last major hit, was released in 1990…a little under a year before the release of Smells Like Teen Spirt. Think about that for a tick. Think about how much the musical landscape changed within 12 months. Poison will go on to release records in relative obscurity, while Nevermind will sell over 30 million copies. Using Unskinny Bop as the last breath of a musical genre before handing the torch to Kurt Cobain is fascinating. Let’s take a closer look at this cultural relic.

In some ways, looking at Unskinny Bop is like finding a bracelet encased in rock at the foot of Mt. Vesuvius. It is this perfectly preserved relic of the past that rose and fell so rapidly it had no time to decompose. The late 80s brought us the peak of glam with Motley Crüe’s Dr. Feelgood and Aerosmith’s Pump. By 1989 the hair, make-up and androgynous clothes were turned up to 11. Glam was getting fat and sassy…and in retrospect it was ready for slaughter. There were some signs. Nine Inch Nails, the Pixies, Nirvana and N.W.A. all had releases in 1989 that were early signs that music was changing and glam would be left behind. However, it took Nevermind, with help from N.W.A., to give glam its final death blow.

Poison’s Unskinny Bop is the height of glam. It is full of Bret Michaels’ superficial non-sensical lyrics, CC DeVille’s guitar solo filler and hooks with so much treble it’s almost like anti-matter and falls in on itself. It’s like Poison knew the glam formula and were just going through the motions and painting by numbers. They came out with Talk Dirty to Me…a personal fav…in 1986 when hair and glam still had a bit of danger. Men wearing blush, lip gloss and mascara was still subversive and pushing boundaries. By 1989 the genre had not moved forward at all and became more bloated, which gave Nirvana the opening it needed to kick the door down.

When you compare Unskinny Bop with Smells Like Teen Spirit it is shocking how quickly music changed. Not just changed…but became radically different. Gone was the ultra gleam of CC DeVille’s guitar and it was replaced by Cobain’s oppressive crunch. Opulent musical arrangements with synth, bloated guitar lines and overproduced vocals were replaced with streamlined riffs, punk-esque drum assaults and raw unvarnished vocals. Guitar solos were out and crunchy sharp riffs were in. Moreover, someone told the sound engineer what bass was and songs had more depth and texture. Glam’s glossy sheen was replaced by a dirty flannel.

On the other end of music, N.W.A. and Public Enemy said enough with this rock shit and were putting out some of the most dangerous, raw and socially explosive music since the Sex Pistols. Rap/hip hop was shining a light on what was happening in urban neighbourhoods, the failure of the war on drugs, police brutality and systemic racism. Hard hitting rap and hip hop were speaking to youth across America and gaining a following. Suddenly glam was surrounded with no escape. Like a bait ball in the Pacific Ocean, glam tried to find safety in numbers but the hip hop, rap and alt rock sharks devoured it in no time.

It is interesting. A number 3 song on Billboard became a relic of the past in less than 12 months. Glam became like Thanos in Endgame. Once the mighty conquerer that had the universe at his feet, to only be turned to dust one movie later. Glam didn’t go out with a bang or a whimper…but more like a ninja disappearing in a puff of smoke…it was there, but as soon as you blinked it was gone without a trace. Having said that, Unskinny Bop persists as glam’s last stand against the shifting sands in music. The song by itself is nothing to write home about, but thinking about its infamous place in music history is fascinating.

Listen to Unskinny Bop