Parents' Guide to I Wanna Rock: The '80s Metal Dream

The fun and fascinating music docuseries features all the big hair, gender-bending costumes, makeup, and wild performances that 1980s "hair metal" and "glam rock" music has to offer. But rather than simply celebrate the genre's most famous and successful bands from the era, I Wanna Rock shares the stories of people who never reached meteoric fame, but who had talent, worked hard, and had very successful careers. It also addresses the overt misogyny in the music industry at the time, and the different ways sexism affected women in the business. As one would expect, there's some discussion about sex, drugs, and rock and roll (and political efforts to tame it). But these conversations are limited, and contextualized into larger discussions that highlight the evolution of people's careers.

The narrative is driven by the honest (and often blunt) insights of people who were active participants in the popular metal scene, and how they saw their work become less about the art form or the talent, and more about image and successful music videos. Their thoughts about how their "metal dreams" suddenly ended, thanks, in part, to Seattle's grunge music scene (headed up by Nirvana) and the mainstreaming of country music by Garth Brooks, also bring up interesting points about music and a musician's need for artistic and personal growth and reinvention. Overall, I Wanna Rock: The ‘80s Metal Dream is an entertaining look at the 1980s metal music genre that will be a fun blast to the past for those who remember the era, and for those who can appreciate its influence on popular music culture today.