Lies They Tell

Absurd and The General are clearly more controversial than Perhaps and Hard Skool. Personally I like all of the new songs, but it's pretty obvious that these more experimental songs are always going to be more divisive. I wouldn't even mind if some people called Absurd and The General universally hated, even if that's not true. But many people do hate those songs, so I can at least understand why someone would think that everyone hates them. The reception of Hard Skool and Perhaps on the other hand has been overwhelmingly positive. It's only really here where I see people bitching about Hard Skool. Casual GNR fans seemed to love it and Perhaps as well. And you can see it in the Spotify streaming numbers. It is going to be very interesting to see how popular The General will be on Spotify.

Sure, but at the same time you could say that these numbers are biased in favor of older songs. If we're only looking at the overall streaming numbers, older songs will always have a head start. People have been listening to those songs for years and years. But even though people have been jamming to Locomotive and PTU for over a decade on Spotify, Hard Skool is still more popular than them, not only when you look at daily streams, but also when you look at overall numbers. That is not too shabby. Obviously time will tell how popular these songs will eventually be, but people used to say that the Chinese Democracy songs sucked compared to the older material too, and those songs would never be anywhere near as popular as the older material. But This I Love is outpacing Out Ta Get Me and My Michelle on Spotify, not just daily but overall. Even today This I Love has more daily streams than Estranged for example. You can't explain that with the novelty of TIL. The song is over ten years old now. I prefer Estranged over TIL, but the numbers don't lie. Sometimes you just have to admit that some songs are super popular even if they are not your cup of tea. And just because you don't like certain songs doesn't mean that they suck. We don't know for certain how popular these new songs will end up being in the long run, but based on how popular Hard Skool and Perhaps are now, I think it's safe to say that they will always be relatively popular. People clearly like these songs. They are not universally hated like some people like to claim just because they don't personally like them.

They are playing Pretty Tied Up at the concerts all the time as well, but Hard Skool is still a more popular song on Spotify. Even Absurd is more popular than Down On The Farm, even though that one is played at the concerts all the time as well. And if you look at the DAILY streams, the list is even more interesting. Hard Skool has 13,204 streams per day. That is about the same amount as Out Ta Get Me which has 13,780 streams per day. And Perhaps is even more popular. It has 25,213 daily streams, which is more than for example My Michelle with it's 21,546 daily streams. You might say that Out Ta Get Me and My Michelle are deep cuts as well, so casuals don't care about them, but seriously the GNR discography is not that large. Out Ta Get Me and My Michelle are fairly popular songs from their most popular album. Still Hard Skool and Perhaps are about as popular. You can't expect these new songs to compete with songs like Welcome To The Jungle. That would be a ridiculous idea. But all in all the songs are doing quite well.

As much as I love the CD era. the most disappointing part about it has been the lack of long and progressive epics. It seems like a conscious decision to keep the songs relatively short. Maybe it's cause people criticized the UYI records for being too bloated and pompous. That might also explain why we haven't gotten any UYI type music videos either cause the UYI -videos were heavily criticized, even if many people love them as well. But if I remember correctly, Axl said in some interview that if they'll make a music video it would be mostly concert footage. And that's exactly what the Better video and the Perhaps video have been. In the early days of the CD era tours Axl played very little UYI material. They played mostly AFD songs. There was no Estranged, no Don't Cry, no Civil War not to mention songs like Pretty Tied Up. They played very little UYI material and it almost seemed like Axl didn't want to play it cause it had been criticized so much. It's almost like he was a bit embarrassed of the UYI records and was determined to make new songs shorter like on Appetite. And it's of course true that casuals prefer shorter songs in general. There's a reason why pop songs are never long songs. It's even possible that the record label asked them to keep the songs shorter than on UYI. Who knows! All I know is that I really like those longer and more progressive songs. TWAT is indeed the closest that we've got from the CD era. I like the way Better has these segments that sound very different from each other. It kinda has that progressive feel, even if it's also a pretty short song. The General and Monster are both great song on their own, but I still feel like if they had found a way to combine those two songs into one epic masterpiece, it could have ended up being my favorite song of all times. I'm not even exaggerating. The General sounds like a perfect beginning for an epic song and Monsters sounds like the perfect ending. But to answer your question, I don't know if GNR will ever release another long and epic song. I hope they will.

No, we didn't all think so. But to answer your question, The General and also Monsters are obviously better than Evaders fanmade music.

For starters, it's a song about child abuse. Now, I'm not saying that it's the first song in the history of music, addressing this issue. But you gotta admit that it's not exactly a typical song, even if you don't like it.

I think the effects are the same. It's just that the quality of the original leak was pretty bad, so the effects sounded even more muddy because of that.

It was about 20 years ago, when we first heard about a GNR song called The General. Feels kinda surreal to listen to it officially now. I hope they release at least a lyric video for it. Kinda feels like this mythical song would deserve at least that.

Well, it makes sense from Axl's point of view. He is a very slow songwriter. He probably feels like he has enough time to write new songs, when they release these old songs at a very slow pace. Well obviously that's just my guess. It is what it is.

I agree that it's safe to say that those songs will be released EVENTUALLY. But it seems like you're missing my point. We know that the Perhaps vinyl is coming soon, but there's no evidence that anything else would be released in the near future. You said "if we have to wait more than 3 months for Monsters, Atlas, State of Grace, then fuck this band." You also said earlier that you've learned to expect the worst from this band, but it doesn't seem like you have. I consider myself one of the more optimistic GNR fans, but even I'm not expecting them to release Atlas or SOG within the next 3 months, cause there's no evidence that anything would be released soon after the Perhaps vinyl. Based on all the evidence the best case scenario is that they would release Monsters together with The General, but even that is far from guaranteed. Unfortunately the most likely scenario is probably that we're only getting The General within the next 3 months. There's a small chance that we'll get Monsters too. But there's no evidence at all that we would be getting Atlas or SOG within the next 3 months. I think we're getting all of these songs some day, but you're only setting yourself up for disappointment if you're expecting them to release Atlas or SOG within the next 3 months.

Safe bet? But why? I haven't seen or heard any evidence that Atlas would be coming any time soon. I do believe that both of these songs will be released some day. But there doesn't seem to be any evidence for that day being any time soon.

Has there ever been a rational reason to think that we would be getting Atlas and State of Grace any time soon? I admit that not getting Monsters would be disappointing since it seems like they originally intended to put it on the vinyl. Fernando even teased that The General is a monster. But wasn't the Atlas thing just a random rumor? You're gonna drive yourself crazy, if you're getting disappointed every time a random rumor doesn't come true. Or is there something that I have missed here? Is there a rational reason to believe that Atlas or SOG would be coming? If so, I haven't heard about it.

So far the best for me has been Hard Skool. (This would have been a more interesting questions after The General (and possibly Monsters?) has been released.

What did Chinese mean to you, at the time, as it finally released and that period in general? The myth, the legend, the frustration... CD always felt like a very personal record to me, since back in the day I didn't know anyone else who was looking forward to it. Axl's GNR was considered a joke everywhere and it was clear that many people would hate the record no matter what. So I couldn't really share my excitement with anyone. (Except with people online of course.) What does Chinese mean to you now, 15 years on? It's still one of my favorite albums. Does the record hold up? Or would you have preferred the '99 version, 2000 intensions or whatever else... I mostly prefer the finished songs over the demos. There's maybe a couple of songs that worked slightly better in their earlier forms. Riad for example. That being said I never really listen to the demo versions these days. The finished versions are great. What have you thought of the tracks we've since had officially and unofficially from CD2/3 I love all of the songs that they've released. Hard Skool being my favorite, then Absurd and then Perhaps. Not sure how I would rank The General and Monsters. I still prefer those songs as one. CD would definitely be a better record if "If The World" was replaced with Hard Skool. I'd probably trade some other songs too. I actually haven't listened to all of the Village leaks. It was kinda sad that I had already heard most of Chinese Democracy when the record was finally released. So that's why I didn't want to listen to all of the Village leaks. But I listened to some of them. Especially Oklahoma was awesome! Are you gonna celebrate the milestone today? How? Lol, no! I'm not that hardcore of a fan. Was Axl rail-roaded by sussy managers, was he the problem, was it the movement in the industry at the time away from big budget music making money, or was it a combo? Probably a combo. But I don't really care to speculate too much. I'm just happy that we're getting new music slowly but surely.

The thing is, we don't actually know if Axl is a procrastinator. That's what many people assume, but it's not a fact. The reason why the songs didn't change all that much from the 2000 Intentions to the final album versions might be just cause they were considered finished tracks. But that doesn't mean that Axl wasn't working on new songs all the time. There's no evidence that Axl hasn't been working on new music all the time throughout these years. We don't know if he's a procrastinator. All we know is that he doesn't release music often. There's not much that we know for a fact about these issues, but there's one thing that we do know. According to Axl himself CD2 was already done in 2014. Here's a quote from Axl: “We recorded a lot of things before Chinese was out,” Rose said. “We’ve worked more on some of those things and we’ve written a few new things. But basically, we have what I call kind of the second half of Chinese. That’s already recorded. And then we have a remix album made of the songs from Chinese. That’s been done for a while, too. An educated guess would be to assume that the word "DONE" means that it's pretty much finished. Would he really say that the album is done, if half of the songs were just instrumentals? So if there's one things that we know about how many songs are done, it's the fact that according to Axl CD2 was pretty much done in 2014. You might say that he's lying or whatever, but at least we know for a fact that this is what he said.

Woke lol? Not too long ago they released a song with lyrics like: "pussy full of maggots" and "syphilistic priestess". I've seen many old school GNR fans complaining that GNR didn't use to be so demonic. 😂 I guess they're doing something right if they're pissing off both overly sensitive snowflakes and anti-woke incels. That being said, Bon Jovi would never release a song like The General and Monsters. These bands have nothing in common.

I just noticed that the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6 was rumoured to be released on October 26th and now the rumoured release date is December 7th. The Perhaps vinyl with The General and Monsters was supposed to be released on October 27th and then it was delayed to December 8th. Imagine if there's a connection? Imagine if they're actually going to use Monsters or The General on the GTA 6 trailer. I've always said that the best possible promotion for new GNR music would be to put it on GTA 6. Putting it on the first trailer of the most anticipated game of all times, would be the best promotion that they could ever have. At the same time, if they really want to make the first trailer of GTA 6 as epic as it can be and use some brand new music to promote it, there probably is no new music as epic as Monsters out there. Brand new GNR music in the GTA 6 trailer. It's probably not going to happen, but damn it would be beautiful if it did happen.

The cellphone clip was Monsters

I listened to it a few times out of curiosity back in the day. It's a great reconstruction of the clip, but it was always obvious that the final version won't sound like the Evader version for obvious reasons. And I didn't want it to sound like that either. It's a fan made reconstruction for crying out loud. Why would I want GNR music to sound fanmade? I have pretty good speakers, so I always heard Monsters in the cellphone clip good enough to have my own expectations based on that. I never really cared about the Evader version much. Even if it was an interesting attempt to recreate the song.

It's funny, here in Finland, where I'm from "the hard school of life" is a common saying. So when Axl sings "too hard school", I feel like I know exactly what he's saying. So it's been surprising to realize that you really don't have that saying in the english language. How come Axl seems to be using these words pretty much the same way we use them in Finland? Maybe he learned it from Michael Monroe!

Monsters is most likely "Soulmonster" yes. But it's not "Me and My Elvis", if that's what you're asking. (Oh, Soulmonster answered just before me)

Yeah, I agree. These songs complement each other. "The General" kicks off with a haunting and mysterious tone, creating the anticipation of an epic journey, only to end abruptly. On the other hand, "Monsters" exudes a sense of conclusion with its "Oh but it's over now" lyrics, but it lacks a proper introduction. It maintains a massive orchestral presence throughout, which, in my opinion, could have been more impactful if it started gradually and mysteriously and concluded with the epic orchestra. That's why these songs fit so well together. And like you said, "The General" doesn't feel as lyrically sparse when paired with "Monsters." Moreover, I find the subject matter of "The General" to be more intriguing. "Monsters" seems to dwell on the familiar theme of a failed relationship and the effort to salvage it, which is a bit boring. However, when these two songs are combined, the lyrics take on deeper dimensions. When "Monsters" follows "The General," it sparks thought-provoking theories about the individuals being sung about. Could it be his mother or stepfather? It certainly doesn't sound like just another song about Stephanie Seymour when viewed in the context of "The General." Oh well, I've kinda accepted that they're separate songs. They're good songs on their own too. I can live with that. But damn, if they had merged these two tracks it would have been a masterpiece. The potential was right there, and it's the missed opportunity that's a bit frustrating.

Wow, I didn't really have big expectations since the first performances of Hard Skool and Perhaps were pretty terrible. This sounded much better than I expected. A pretty good performance honestly. I love that video where the guy shouts "Axl, play us The General" and then right after that Axl goes, "Okay, we're going to try a new song" That must've been a special moment!

The General and Monsters as one song is basically what i hoped for. The General alone feels incomplete. Monsters alone feels incomplete. But together they are exactly what I hoped for. Why was I expecting a long and epic song? It's basically because the GNR camp confirmed that the intro from the 2006 shows was The General. You can't make a short song with that kind of an orchestra. Unless of course you only use half of that instrumental. So yeah, the GNR camp themselves are responsible for the high expectations. The good news is that, against all odds, The General and Monsters actually exceeded all my expectations. Neither The General or Monsters alone would have been worth the hype. But together they are.

The perfect compromise would be to have both separated versions and also one epic version that's a combination of both songs. I don't really care about the debate whether or not these are two songs or one. All I know is that I personally much prefer to listen to them back to back. I always listen to music on shuffle when I use streaming services and it would be annoying if the shuffle would play these songs separately. So it would be cool to have it as one song and as separate songs also. Kinda like What I'd Say, Pt. 1&2 by Ray Charles. Both part 1 and part 2 are on Spotify separately, but you can also listen to them as one song. There's no reason why GNR couldn't do the same with The General and Monsters.