Our first Hair Metal vid! Woo hoo!

Ah, a guilty pleasure: hair metal. Goofy songs with simple melodies over a pounding rhythm section, unless they're performing a commercially appealing ballad, were the ultimate suburban kid escape from the mid '80s and early '90s.

These songs will be making appearances here, in no particular order.

Today, I thought that a fairly obscure London band, Thunder, would kick it off. The song, Dirty Love is from the Backstreet Symphony album. (Yes, I own it.) It contains pretty simple lyrics, like we expect: "...like a cheap suit, you were all over me..." And my favorite, from the chorus: "...I don't want you touchin' me..." which is just the sort of irony, now that I'm older that makes me smile. When you're a teen or a twentysomething, at least where I grew up, there wasn't any such thing as a love too dirty.

Simple song. Always makes me sing along and maybe play a little air guitar. The video has the added bonuses of British accented video models and a complete lack of plot.

If you can't laugh and enjoy this, well, you need to keep reading the Happiness Notebook. We'll peel back those jaded layers of cynicism. Wait and see.