How did Heavy Metal Hair bands significantly impact the 1980's?

Question

Bands such as:

Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Poison, Black Sabbath, Pat Benatar, Metallica, ACDC, KISS, etc.

Answer 1

The first rumblings of the hair band sound could be said to be in 1982 with Asia's "Heat of the Moment" (#40 for the year). Though not really a "hair band" themselves (they were technically proficient and didn't focus much on their image), the sound of that song with its huger bombastic hooks and hard rock edge signaled to the pop world that listeners were ready to buy that type of song in droves and record execs paid attention.

By 1984, the hair band music of Nightranger ("Sister Christian",#40 and "When You Close Your Eyes",#98), Quiet Riot ("*** On Feel the Noize",#68) and Ratt ("Round and Round",#87) were among the year's biggest hits.

1987 and 1988 were two more banner hair band years with Bon Jovi placing 2 in the year end Top 100 ("Living on a Prayer" and "Wanted Dead or Alive") along with Europe's "Carrie" and Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again" for 1987. 1988 saw Whitesnake's "Is This Love?", Bon Jovi's "Bad Medicine", Poison's "Nothin' but a Good Time" and White Lion's "Wait" among the year's biggest chart hits.

Without a doubt, hair metal's biggest year though was 1989 as they closed the decade with 9 of the year's biggest hits. Bon Jovi's "Lay Your Hands on Me" and "Born to Be my Baby",Skid Row's "18 and Life", White Lion's "When the Children Cry",Bad English's "When I See You Smile", Lita Ford's "Close my Eyes Forever",Warrant's "Heaven", Great White's "Once Bitten Twice Shy" and Poison's "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" among the years Top 100. It was also clearly the biggest year for hard rock in general on the pop charts since they accumulated 16 of the years 100 biggest hits.

Hair metal continued to be strong with 4 of 1990's biggest hits, 6 of them in 1991, and 4 in 1992 after which came the sharp dropoff (only 1 hair band song, Ugly Kid Joe's "Cat's in the Cradle" remake, landed among 1993's biggest.)

Most credit is usually given to Nirvana and grunge for killing off hair metal ("Smells Like Teen Spirit" was among 1992's biggest hits) but a better answer might be the dominance on pop radio of R&B and rap as they took 55 of 1993's top 100 year-end positions.

EDIT:

And I'll also point out that you will get ANGRY responses from Black Sabbath, Metallica, AC/DC and Kiss fans for listing them as "hair metal". (Though in fairness a few of Kiss' 80s tunes, like "Heaven's on Fire", came pretty close to that sound.)