Winger

The pall pop metal casts upon 1990's horrendous Hot 100 is a triumph of mass narrowcasting. By downplaying anything blatant in the music, marketers minimize tuneouts based on accidents of gender or subgeneration--potentially, any passive Caucasian under age 25 should be willing to consume (in descending order of marginal differentiation) Poison or Warrant or Jon Bon or Heart or Cheap Trick or David Goddamn Cassidy. So let the nadir stand in for all of them. Swallowing hooks from blooze to prog, masking their will to power in fake vulnerability and youthcult rote, Winger is Whitesnake with the sexism muted and the facelifts down the road. They may last a while, they may not. They're so bad that they're not even completely terrible. (Grade: C-)