Glam metal, pop metal or hair metal is a sub-genre of rock music that arose in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the United States. It was a dominant genre in popular rock music throughout the 1980s starting in 1983. It has hard rock/heavy metal guitar riffs and solos, upbeat pop melodies and catchy, poppy choruses and lyrics about stuff like love, sex and passion. Often confused as a fashion, the look of glam metal was bright colored makeup, red or punk lipstick, painted nails, long and really fluffy hair, headbands and skin-tight denim and leather or crazy costumes. The style was pioneered by Quiet Riot with their album named Metal Health which was sold in 1983 and got lots of popularity. Other glam metal bands include Poison, Ratt, Bon Jovi, LA Guns and Kix. Mötley Crüe first began as simply heavy metal but became glam metal with their album titled Theatre of Pain. The genre lost all its popularity in 1991 when grunge/alternative rock bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden came into the mainstream. Today, some bands have brought back the glam metal style. Some of these bands are Black Veil Brides, who originally were melodic metalcore but went glam metal with their second album named Set the World on Fire with songs like Rebel Love Song and Love Isn't Always Fair. Other bands are Steel Panther and The Darkness. Blessed By a Broken Heart, one of these bands sometimes fused glam metal with metalcore. Falling in Reverse, another one of these bands, have also played easycore. Some bands in glam metal have been mislabeled as glam metal for their look or for when they were popular. Some of these bands were Guns 'N Roses, who were simply hard rock. Another is Twisted Sister, who aren't upbeat or poppy at all, sound more like bands like Ozzy Osbourne and Dio and don't even have any romantic or sexual lyrics and are just metal. KISS is another one. However, they were glam metal from 1983-1989.

The genre was also referred to, often by detractors, as hair metal. This term was popularized by MTV in the 1990s and derives from the tendency amongst most bands to style their long hair in a feminine tendency.
However, today the term is used in a non-derogatory sense.

The genre has enjoyed revivals since the beginning of the new millennium, with a lot of new bands especially in Sweden, Finland and the US.