[Classic Rock] The 10 Worst GN'R Songs

[Silent Jay]

Guns N' Roses have recorded some absolute turkeys in their time. Here's 10 prime examples...

When Slash, Duff and Axl decided it was time to stop all the nonsense, bury the hatchet, and breathe new life into Guns N’ Roses, any true rock fan would surely have been delighted. Whatever you think about Rose’s ongoing silly antics, Slash’s distinctly average post-Guns career and Duff’s eyebrow-raising wealth management firm, there’s no denying that the singer, guitarist and bassist formed the bedrock of the most important, most exciting rock band of the last 30 years. The number of classics Guns N’ Roses have produced is staggering. Welcome To The Jungle, November Rain, Sweet Child O’ Mine, Estranged, Paradise City, Madagascar to mention just a few… the list is long and illustrious, the songs rightly treated like rock royalty.

Normally we’d come to praise Guns, not bury them. But that isn’t to say that the band haven’t produced some absolute turkeys over the years. You don’t believe us? Well check this shit out…

 

10. Anything Goes – Appetite For Destruction (1987)

I gave Appetite… five stars when I reviewed it on release way back in 1987, and I’ll defend its ‘rock’n’roll genius’ status to the death. But not even I can stake a claim that the album’s all killer, no filler. Not when this little turkey is nestling amongst the tracks. Axl starts off by telling us he’s been ‘thinkin’ ‘bout sex’. We can only wish he’d spent his time actually having sex rather than lending a hand to writing this tosh. To be fair, the tune starts off with a pretty neat Slash riff, but it quickly descends into hard rock farce, a mishmash of half-baked riffs and instantly forgettable vocal melodies. Anything Goes? But not this, surely.

9. Human Being – The Spaghetti Incident? (1993)

Now I know a lot of people like the New York Dolls – and to a certain degree I do too. They were loud, brash and abrasive, and their glam-evolving-into-punk look was undeniably innovative and appealing. Trouble is, they couldn’t carry a song in a bucket. Human Being is a case in point; a tune that rides roughshod over some basic boogie-woogie riffs dressed up as something attitudinal. This Guns version tries to make something of nothing, with piano plonking all over the place and Axl working himself into a right old vocal lather. Trouble is, it’s all style and zero substance. Six minutes 48 of nothing at all.

8. My World – Use Your Illusion II (1991)

This tune sounds like Axl couldn’t make up his mind whether he wanted to go hip hop or pay homage to Nine Inch Nails. What he ended up doing was producing one minute and 23 seconds of experimentation that might have been interesting as a starting point to developing something original, but as it stands feels like a quarter-baked idea not really fit for public consumption. You can only wonder why the band felt it was enough of an artistic statement in this embryonic form to merit inclusion on an official release. We’ve got news for them. It wasn’t.

7. Perfect Crime – Use Your Illusion I (1991)

Guns have never convinced me when they try to rock out at breakneck speed. This song is a perfect example of why. Slash is a player of groove, swagger and taste. He’s not a thrasher, and when he tries to up the tempo and punch out the riffs it almost always comes across as forced and throwaway. At two minutes and 23 seconds Perfect Crime is mercifully short, and while it’s probably fun for the band to play hard and fast, this feels like something you’d play at soundcheck just to get the fingers moving. Nothing more.

6. Scraped – Chinese Democracy (2008)

Is this the sound of the bottom of a barrel being scraped? While I would go toe to toe anytime against any Guns fan who feels Chinese Democracy has no value, it’s hard to put up a solid defence ofScraped. It sounds like a song where the verse, bridge and chorus were swept up off the cutting room floor and glued together to fulfil some sort of contractual obligation. A song that you’d write early one morning and dismiss out of hand by lunchtime.

5. I Don’t Care About You – The Spaghetti Incident (1993)

Yes, it was cool that Guns didn’t only listen to classic rock. It was what gave them their nihilistic, ‘fuck you’ attitudinal edge, their point of difference from 99 per cent of the generic hair metallers on Sunset Strip. But playing punk music clearly wasn’t what this band was cut out for. And playing bad punk music was a huge waste of everyone’s time. Fear’s I Don’t Care About You is really bad punk music, a simple thrash that only exists to tell the world to fuck off. And that gets old real quick.

4. Reckless Life – G N’ R Lies (1988)

Originally released on the Live ?!*@ Like A Suicide EP in 1986, this track was the first time the world got to hear Guns N’ Roses. It’s not a terrible song by any means, but judging by the extraordinary heights Guns would themselves scale, it’s clear filler. The opening riff is a pretty good rip-off of Joe Perry’s lick in the chorus of Aerosmith’s Toys In The Attic. Come to think of it, the whole song feeds off the Tyler and Perry classic. But it never manages to achieve anything like the same sass and class. You can hear a great band in the making, for sure. But this is not a great song.

3. Dead Horse – Use Your Illusion I (1991)

This number really doesn’t do itself any favours by sitting just ahead of sensational album closer Coma in the original running order ofUse Your Illusion I. Dead Horse starts with a plaintive bit of acoustic strummery as Axl whines ‘not that you care’ over the top. Well at least he got that right! Despite the singer letting out a piercing scream that suggests he’s got his nuts caught in the hi-hat when the tune finally revs up, there’s nothing Rose or anyone else in the band can do to save this turgid riffer from sinking under the weight of its own aspirations.

2. Riad N’ The Bedouins – Chinese Democracy (2008)

Crackin’ title, poor song. It starts out with Axl trying to channel his inner Robert Plant doing Immigrant Song, but before you know it he’s off at a million miles an hour on what appears to be a rant about the war in Iraq – though who knows for sure? There’s the germ of a tune here, but it’s comprehensively buried under Axl’s bile and an over-dependence on odd effects. It’s hard to see how this one made the cut on Chinese Democracy. One listen to beauties likeBetter or Sorry would surely make anyone drop this song like a stone.

1. Bad Apples – Use Your Illusion I (1991)

What exactly are Guns trying to do here? It’s hard to tell. My suspicion is that they thought this tune was casually nodding at those messy Stones songs that made Exile On Main Street such a raggedy-assed joy. The problem is that nothing – really nothing – comes together here. The band sound like they’re more interested in forgetting the whole thing, downing tools and rolling a big fat one. I for one would have been 100 per cent behind that idea.

 

http://teamrock.com/feature/2016-08-14/the-10-worst-guns-n-roses-songs

Edited May 5, 2017 by Silent Jay

[Babooshka]

This is some cheap clickbait crap right here. Bad Apples is in no way their worst song.

Edited August 18, 2016 by Babooshka

[Gordon Comstock]

11 minutes ago, Silent Jay said:

Welcome To The Jungle, November Rain, Sweet Child O’ Mine, Estranged, Paradise City, Madagascar to mention just a few…

I think this is the first time I've seen Madagascar listed among the "classics". It's a good song, but really?

 

Bad Apples is one of my favourite songs on UYI I.

[Fitha_whiskey]

Anyone who says Perfect Crime, Reckless Life, Dead Horse and Bad Apples are bad songs can fuck off. 

2 minutes ago, Gordon Comstock said:

I think this is the first time I've seen Madagascar listed among the "classics". It's a good song, but really?

 

Bad Apples is one of my favourite songs on UYI I.

I love it (BA) too. Some cool lyrics.

[DieselDaisy]

I like Perfect Crime, Reckless Life, Dead Horse and Bad Apples - I've never quite got my head around the reason Bad Apples is disliked? I'd go, if we are including fake Guns: 1/ My World 2/ Chinese Democracy 3/ Scraped 4/ Shackler's Revenge 5/ Sorry.

[IncitingChaos]

Dead Horse is a badass song...any other band that writes that puts it out as a single and makes a name off the song...Guns N Roses uses it as a filler. I'm so mad about that song being on the list. 

[-W.A.R-]

Dead Horse should in no way be on this list...the rasp is godly on that record.

honestly if we're doing a "worst of" it would mostly consist of CD songs like Shackers, Scraped, If The World, Raid, etc (not knocking CD, just saying songs don't hold their weight as well as classic Guns tunes) and songs like You Aint The First, My World (which are pretty much joke songs) Shotgun Blues, Get In The Ring, So Fine, Look At Your Game Girl.

Edited August 18, 2016 by -W.A.R-

[FallToPieces65]

Perfect crime is awesome imo

35 minutes ago, Silent Jay said:

Guns N' Roses have recorded some absolute turkeys in their time. Here's 10 prime examples...

When Slash, Duff and Axl decided it was time to stop all the nonsense, bury the hatchet, and breathe new life into Guns N’ Roses, any true rock fan would surely have been delighted. Whatever you think about Rose’s ongoing silly antics, Slash’s distinctly average post-Guns career and Duff’s eyebrow-raising wealth management firm, there’s no denying that the singer, guitarist and bassist formed the bedrock of the most important, most exciting rock band of the last 30 years. The number of classics Guns N’ Roses have produced is staggering. Welcome To The Jungle, November Rain, Sweet Child O’ Mine, Estranged, Paradise City, Madagascar to mention just a few… the list is long and illustrious, the songs rightly treated like rock royalty.

Normally we’d come to praise Guns, not bury them. But that isn’t to say that the band haven’t produced some absolute turkeys over the years. You don’t believe us? Well check this shit out…

 

10. Anything Goes – Appetite For Destruction (1987)

I gave Appetite… five stars when I reviewed it on release way back in 1987, and I’ll defend its ‘rock’n’roll genius’ status to the death. But not even I can stake a claim that the album’s all killer, no filler. Not when this little turkey is nestling amongst the tracks. Axl starts off by telling us he’s been ‘thinkin’ ‘bout sex’. We can only wish he’d spent his time actually having sex rather than lending a hand to writing this tosh. To be fair, the tune starts off with a pretty neat Slash riff, but it quickly descends into hard rock farce, a mishmash of half-baked riffs and instantly forgettable vocal melodies. Anything Goes? But not this, surely.

9. Human Being – The Spaghetti Incident? (1993)

Now I know a lot of people like the New York Dolls – and to a certain degree I do too. They were loud, brash and abrasive, and their glam-evolving-into-punk look was undeniably innovative and appealing. Trouble is, they couldn’t carry a song in a bucket. Human Being is a case in point; a tune that rides roughshod over some basic boogie-woogie riffs dressed up as something attitudinal. This Guns version tries to make something of nothing, with piano plonking all over the place and Axl working himself into a right old vocal lather. Trouble is, it’s all style and zero substance. Six minutes 48 of nothing at all.

8. My World – Use Your Illusion II (1991)

This tune sounds like Axl couldn’t make up his mind whether he wanted to go hip hop or pay homage to Nine Inch Nails. What he ended up doing was producing one minute and 23 seconds of experimentation that might have been interesting as a starting point to developing something original, but as it stands feels like a quarter-baked idea not really fit for public consumption. You can only wonder why the band felt it was enough of an artistic statement in this embryonic form to merit inclusion on an official release. We’ve got news for them. It wasn’t.

7. Perfect Crime – Use Your Illusion I (1991)

Guns have never convinced me when they try to rock out at breakneck speed. This song is a perfect example of why. Slash is a player of groove, swagger and taste. He’s not a thrasher, and when he tries to up the tempo and punch out the riffs it almost always comes across as forced and throwaway. At two minutes and 23 seconds Perfect Crime is mercifully short, and while it’s probably fun for the band to play hard and fast, this feels like something you’d play at soundcheck just to get the fingers moving. Nothing more.

6. Scraped – Chinese Democracy (2008)

Is this the sound of the bottom of a barrel being scraped? While I would go toe to toe anytime against any Guns fan who feels Chinese Democracy has no value, it’s hard to put up a solid defence ofScraped. It sounds like a song where the verse, bridge and chorus were swept up off the cutting room floor and glued together to fulfil some sort of contractual obligation. A song that you’d write early one morning and dismiss out of hand by lunchtime.

5. I Don’t Care About You – The Spaghetti Incident (1993)

Yes, it was cool that Guns didn’t only listen to classic rock. It was what gave them their nihilistic, ‘fuck you’ attitudinal edge, their point of difference from 99 per cent of the generic hair metallers on Sunset Strip. But playing punk music clearly wasn’t what this band was cut out for. And playing bad punk music was a huge waste of everyone’s time. Fear’s I Don’t Care About You is really bad punk music, a simple thrash that only exists to tell the world to fuck off. And that gets old real quick.

4. Reckless Life – G N’ R Lies (1988)

Originally released on the Live ?!*@ Like A Suicide EP in 1986, this track was the first time the world got to hear Guns N’ Roses. It’s not a terrible song by any means, but judging by the extraordinary heights Guns would themselves scale, it’s clear filler. The opening riff is a pretty good rip-off of Joe Perry’s lick in the chorus of Aerosmith’s Toys In The Attic. Come to think of it, the whole song feeds off the Tyler and Perry classic. But it never manages to achieve anything like the same sass and class. You can hear a great band in the making, for sure. But this is not a great song.

3. Dead Horse – Use Your Illusion I (1991)

This number really doesn’t do itself any favours by sitting just ahead of sensational album closer Coma in the original running order ofUse Your Illusion I. Dead Horse starts with a plaintive bit of acoustic strummery as Axl whines ‘not that you care’ over the top. Well at least he got that right! Despite the singer letting out a piercing scream that suggests he’s got his nuts caught in the hi-hat when the tune finally revs up, there’s nothing Rose or anyone else in the band can do to save this turgid riffer from sinking under the weight of its own aspirations.

2. Riad N’ The Bedouins – Chinese Democracy (2008)

Crackin’ title, poor song. It starts out with Axl trying to channel his inner Robert Plant doing Immigrant Song, but before you know it he’s off at a million miles an hour on what appears to be a rant about the war in Iraq – though who knows for sure? There’s the germ of a tune here, but it’s comprehensively buried under Axl’s bile and an over-dependence on odd effects. It’s hard to see how this one made the cut on Chinese Democracy. One listen to beauties likeBetter or Sorry would surely make anyone drop this song like a stone.

1. Bad Apples – Use Your Illusion I (1991)

What exactly are Guns trying to do here? It’s hard to tell. My suspicion is that they thought this tune was casually nodding at those messy Stones songs that made Exile On Main Street such a raggedy-assed joy. The problem is that nothing – really nothing – comes together here. The band sound like they’re more interested in forgetting the whole thing, downing tools and rolling a big fat one. I for one would have been 100 per cent behind that idea.

 

http://teamrock.com/feature/2016-08-14/the-10-worst-guns-n-roses-songs

How could you dare to put "Dead Horse" on this list???!!!

[Ace Nova]

Dead Horse is arguably a top 20 GN'R song of all time...so it being on the list is a complete joke.  Also, nothing from AFD can be considered in any "worst list".

[Van Hagar]

Ive always liked Anything Goes.  1st of the worst! lol

[Silverburst80]

Reckless Life and Perfect Crime?, ha!. Ah well it's just an opinion at the end of the day. I think saying Fear is a really bad punk band is the more offensive thing in this article.

Edited August 18, 2016 by Silverburst80

[Silent Jay]

I think it's an accurate list. I would have put Shotgun Blues instead of Reckless Life or Anything Goes. So Fine maybe.

And it's wonderful to see some love for Madagascar.

[Gackt]

1 hour ago, Silent Jay said:

10. Anything Goes – Appetite For Destruction (1987)
7. Perfect Crime – Use Your Illusion I (1991)
6. Scraped – Chinese Democracy (2008)
3. Dead Horse – Use Your Illusion I (1991)
2. Riad N’ The Bedouins – Chinese Democracy (2008)
1. Bad Apples – Use Your Illusion I (1991)

[StrangerInThisTown]

Bad Apples has such a good times vibe and cool lyrics and some grooving riffs, just a cool Izzy song you can see Slash expanded a bit. Also the solo just makes you go wtf. And Dead Horse is so good it should be in the setlist forever, with Axl getting to get out the guitar and maybe jam a bit at the start. It is one of the songs I want to see live the most again.

Also Bad Apples live in rio was completely awesome. Wish there was video for it, interesting to see how axl would dance to that song

[FuriousStyles]

That their catalogue of music is rather small, and the fact that the classics are such absolute classics, means the rest of their catalogue usually gets marginalized.

Surely, Shackler's So Fine Revenge is the worst song ever.

 

 

 

[Silent Jay]

But as someone posted on another board, even their bad songs are worth listening to.

[BorderlineCrazy]

I think it'd be extremely hard to make a worse list than this. Most of those songs are awesome.

Whoever wrote this should have put "My World" among GNR classics so we knew for a fact this whole article was a joke.

This easily qualifies for the top 10 of worst rankings ever made 

[Italian girl]

BS!!!!!!

 

[Gracii Guns]

I don't disagree with the list, it was well-written and I have a lot of respect for the guys at Classic Rock. 

Just want to say that Bad Apples prepared me for the A-Level History module I did on the USA's approach to communism in the 20th Century. So, thanks for that. 

[Johnny Drama]

Anyone who thinks two of UYI 1s best are garbage in Dead Horse and Perfect Crime is a moron.  I wasn't a fan of Bad Apples originally but it grew on me. I think the reason it gets crap is that for the song it is the mix is a bit all over the place,  the band is all over Axl and as usual Izzy needs to be a lot louder. 

 

Excluding CD, TSI, and other covers I'd simply say:

1. Get in the Ring (immature)

2. Shotgun Blues (same)

3. My World (if it's a real song)

4. Anything Goes (Guns go hair metal)

[StrangerInThisTown]

51 minutes ago, Johnny Drama said:

Anyone who thinks two of UYI 1s best are garbage in Dead Horse and Perfect Crime is a moron.  I wasn't a fan of Bad Apples originally but it grew on me. I think the reason it gets crap is that for the song it is the mix is a bit all over the place,  the band is all over Axl and as usual Izzy needs to be a lot louder. 

 

Excluding CD, TSI, and other covers I'd simply say:

1. Get in the Ring (immature)

2. Shotgun Blues (same)

3. My World (if it's a real song)

4. Anything Goes (Guns go hair metal)

It looks more like 4 of Axls worst lyrics, I mean musically I really like all of them except My World. If the musics good even lyrics I dont consider good dont really bother me, but then that might change from person to person. I always found it sad that the awesome music slash and izzy wrote for GITR never gets played now just because of the lyrics.

Edited August 18, 2016 by StrangerInThisTown

[Swedish]

Perfect Crime, Bad Apples, Reckless Life and Dead Horse are some of my favorite GN'R tracks! 

[Nintari]

TSI doesn't count because it's a cover album. Insisting anything is bad on that record is a critique on the original song writers. The same can be said for CD since it's only GNR by name. That leaves only ONE bad GNR song in existence which is, as we all know, My World. 

[Swedish]

2 minutes ago, Nintari said:

TSI doesn't count because it's a cover album. Insisting anything is bad on that record is a critique on the original song writers. The same can be said for CD since it's only GNR by name. That leaves only ONE bad GNR song in existence which is, as we all know, My World. 

Well and Anything Goes, I've never enjoyed that one.

[RexRoyal]

I'd literally listen to any of these songs (excluding My World of course) over most of the songs on Spaghetti. Which, oddly enough, Human Being is my favorite song off that record. Imagine that.