What Is Glitter?

Glitter rock was glam rock minus the ambition. For those who found the art school pretensions of the early '70s glam movement too cerebral, glitter provided a more purely hedonistic alternative. Glitter artists' personas and wardrobes were no less outrageous--if anything, they raised the bar for camp and flamboyance even higher--but their music stripped glam to its underlying simplicity, reveling in notions of a science fiction alternate reality that offered good times for everyone. With its ponderously fantastical lyrics and primal electric-boogie rhythms, T. Rex came closest to straddling the line between the high art aspirations of glam and the lowbrow pleasures of glitter, achieving both critical acclaim and mainstream success in the U.K. However, the true stars of glitter--like Slade and Gary Glitter--were generally dismissed by reviewers and adored by fans, who bought millions of their records during glitter's heyday between 1972 and 1975. Glitter had already faded by the time the nihilism of punk reared its head in the late '70s, but its stars' high volumes and long hair would resurface a decade later in Hollywood's Sunset Strip hair metal scene.