Prostitute - the hardest GNR song to sing of all?

[Towelie]

Okay, I've been having one-on-one vocal lessons for the last year now and it's going pretty good and I've noticed some major improvements. Have sung quite a bit of GNR, but I gotta say, Prostitute is one helluva bitch to sing! "Love that you fed by perversion and paaaaaaiiin" is the killer bit.

Any other budding singers attempted this bitch of a song?

[Rovim]

You Could Be Mine, Coma, Scraped, There Was A Time.

[Towelie]

You Could Be Mine, Coma, Scraped, There Was A Time.

I've sung both YCBM and TWAT, and although they have challenging parts, they're a piece of piss compared to Prostitute imo.

Edited July 18, 2015 by Towelie

[Rovim]

You Could Be Mine, Coma, Scraped, There Was A Time.

I've sung both YCBM and TWAT, and although they have challenging parts, they're a piece of piss compared to Prostitute imo.

Not that hard if you have the range and power vocally. With the other songs I've mentioned the main challenge is time to breath. There are very few and short spaces between lines. And that's on top of the high notes and power needed Prostitute just has that one challenging part, not like YCBM where it's brutal all around, Coma where it's a marathon, or Scraped.

The comparsion I'm making is to a singer with the same range as Axl and power vocally.

Edited July 18, 2015 by Rovim

[Towelie]

You Could Be Mine, Coma, Scraped, There Was A Time.

I've sung both YCBM and TWAT, and although they have challenging parts, they're a piece of piss compared to Prostitute imo.

Not that hard if you have the range and power vocally. With the other songs I've mentioned the main challenge is time to breath. There are very few and short spaces between lines. And that's on top of the high notes and power needed Prostitute just has that one challenging part, the high notes.

The comparsion I'm making is to a singer with the same range as Axl and power vocally.

Fair point. Edited July 18, 2015 by Towelie

[Rovim]

If The World is another one, as well as Oh My God.

[Gackt]

It's all about Street of Dreams

[Jordan Rose]

Speaking entirely regarding Axl, (as opposed to a young singer with undamaged chords and full range and power), Twat is clearly the hardest for him because it's 80% in that mid-range where he's lost so much power. The only time he has sung iot easily and effortlessly was 12/05/06 and it's very interesting to watch the video and see him actually performing, moving, gesturing to the crowd, making eye contact, emoting because in literally every other performance his whole concentration is going into just getting through the first half of the song.

He came pretty close to nailing Prostitute pretty effortlessly in 2014 and had he been doing it every night he'd have figured it out like he has e.g. Jungle after doing it a trillion times. But Twat was another story.

He's never had a problem with his range when re-creating ridiculously high shit, whether he's using falsetto or screaming with his chest voice. Since Hammerstein he has always struggle with the Twat verses but always manages to pull something out of the bag for the screaming parts.

Scraped is brutal for him because he has to alternate the chorus in his weakest range and the verses which he has to force out.

Oh yeah...and Axl actually said in 2014 that Twat 'is the hardest one we do.'

Someone mentioned If The World. Go listen to Toronto 2010, he sang it so brilliantly and effortlessly it was better than the record and he even added in a bunch of awesome flourishes and a sweet scream going into the final chorus.

[Bumblefeet]

I've attempted to sing a lot of the Chinese Democracy songs and the parts I find most challenging are:

The intro to Scraped and making it through the lyrics (the chorus is pretty easy)

Rhiad... my voice is usually shot after this

Streets of Dreams as mentioned has some challenging parts that are easy to get wrong

Prostitute and TWAT are manageable because you can build up to the high notes, but both songs leave little room for breathing lol

The high note in IRS and the song is also a strain on the voice.

If the World is also one I can't do more than twice in a row without losing my voice.

But I like the challenge!

So I would nominate the intro to Scraped (which I hate by the way, they should have used the live drum solo straight into the song works better).

It's hard to produce those sounds out of the blue whereas with the other songs like I said you have some buildup to get there.

Edited July 18, 2015 by Bumblefeet

[Słash]

But can you sing Slikworms?

[Bumblefeet]

But can you sing Slikworms?

My next dentist appointment isn't for another 3 months but I'll let you know.

By the way, Oh My God is also a demanding song, not up there with the aforementioned but also a tad straining.

[Amir]

I'm not a singer, but I always imagined Don't Damn Me would be one of the hardest to sing for sheer lack of places to take a breather, assumed that's why it wasn't played during UYI tour.

[Mendez]

Not a singer, but seems like the hardest songs are the ones that are the edge of a register that allow no breathing time for an extended period of time. (Coma, TWAT, Better, maybe Locomotive on some parts)

[Rovim]

Not a singer, but seems like the hardest songs are the ones that are the edge of a register that allow no breathing time for an extended period of time. (Coma, TWAT, Better, maybe Locomotive on some parts)

It was so effortless for Axl to sing Better in 2006 when he could just stand there while nailing it and not being into it at all lol. I thought that was great. Sometimes his childish behavior pays off.

Song starts at the 1:39 mark:

[MrSoftie]

Not a singer, but seems like the hardest songs are the ones that are the edge of a register that allow no breathing time for an extended period of time. (Coma, TWAT, Better, maybe Locomotive on some parts)

It was so effortless for Axl to sing Better in 2006 when he could just stand there while nailing it and not being into it at all lol. I thought that was great. Sometimes his childish behavior pays off.

Song starts at the 1:39 mark:

Absolutely. This is how he always sounds so amazing on studio vocals, the problem is if he thinks he can do that without working for it... well we end up with shitty Axl live.

But yeah, for songs like Prostitute, TWAT, etc I'm happy enough if he just keeps to the center stage and focuses on the vocals. Perhaps he should have done that at the 2002 VMAs.. lol.

[Mendez]

Not a singer, but seems like the hardest songs are the ones that are the edge of a register that allow no breathing time for an extended period of time. (Coma, TWAT, Better, maybe Locomotive on some parts)

It was so effortless for Axl to sing Better in 2006 when he could just stand there while nailing it and not being into it at all lol. I thought that was great. Sometimes his childish behavior pays off.

Song starts at the 1:39 mark:

I was talking about when he just uses his chest voice, like the first hammerstein gig his voice cracked a little bit more and sounded strained a bit (same with twat on that night) because he was trying to use his chest voice mostly but the ones after that he did his head voice rasp (whatever you call that: singing in the register that isn't his chest). You can tell the difference on the chorus on the vid you posted (head voice rasp) and say the universal city gig (chest voice belting). Still sounds great either way he sings it

Edited July 18, 2015 by Mendez

[AxlisOld]

The really high parts aren't hard at all to sing because they're all sung out of normal modal register and into his head voice or falsetto, which is where Axl now tries to sing everything else. When he hits a messy part that is out of both of those ranges, you get the voice cracks.

[Flayer]

Not saying I'd sound real good but I can get through Coma, Scraped, Garden of Eden, all the ones it's easy to run out of breath on. But I cannot fucking do Prostitute. I cannot do If The World. And I cannot do Sweet Child O' Mine. Real bitch of a song.

[dalsh327]

Even when people cover It's So Easy they have a hard time nailing the high notes right so they start screaming instead of singing. SCOM, most of it's easy but then you get to "where do we go" through to the end and very few nail it, so they kind of fake it or point the mic to the audience when they can't.

Coma and Locomotive are just too whiplash fast and a lot of range in it for just about any singer, Axl screamed through Locomotive when he did it. They should have just done an instrumental medley of both and let the audience sing along to it.

There's very few who can "nail" a GNR cover but even going back to bands like AC/DC & Judas Priest, real tough to do those songs properly.

I don't think there's a 'hardest song' overall because they're all tough for similar reasons, he could sing 80 percent of the song, it's just that 20 percent that's a bitch for him to do. It's just that when he did the Revolver award show, he was delivering an abbreviated set and had no shows to do after that for weeks where he could have shredded it up and gone for broke, and didn't.

He should just go to people criticizing him - "if you think you can do better, here's the stage".

[Black Sabbath]

The thing about TWAT is getting out of breath in the first verses. The rest is fairly easy if you have the range and power.

Never had a problem with YCBM though. Coma is tough at the end due to the speed of the lyrics. Scraped is just all over the place.

Prostitute is definitely up there though

[wkuk04]

Maybe we should have a My GnR contest. Record various Guns songs vocally and put it to vote on here, winner receives a packet of Skittles.

[Hollywood Gunner]

lol no

[Flayer]

Let's revisit that idea next year if there's been nothing new going on at all.

[Powerage5]

For the record, at the June 6th show last year (Which had TWAT and Prostitute in the set), Axl said after TWAT it's the hardest song for him to sing live.

[magisme]

I sound awesome on the "ass ya-saaaaaah why I woo chooo ta prossitow my-saaaaaah" part.