Perhaps - New Guns N' Roses Single - Discussion

[bmus1]

2 minutes ago, Voodoochild said:

I was listening to the other recent releases - Shadow, Hard Skool and Absurd - and noticed how Perhaps wasn't as loud as those others. Which is, of course, an excellent thing, as it's not brickwalled.

Mainly I only wish those other songs to be featured in an album if it is to have them remixed/remastered with decent levels.

If they did a Hard Skool EP 2 but with the four studio songs I'd buy that in a heart beat. Keep the live stuff to live releases, or at the very least make it a full LP if you're using live tracks to round out a tracklist.

The big question is if in 2024 will they do another A/B side with Atlas, or will Atlas be the single to push a release containing all 5 songs.

[alangarcianr]

GNR is trending on twitter 

we’re back on the charts 

Hope this gives the band some extra fuel to release more stuff 

[PrimalScream]

Not sure if it has already come up before, but in the end, that apple music link that was picked up by google was the real one, wasn't it?

https://music.apple.com/br/album/perhaps/1700790745?i=1700790746
 

 

[rocknroll41]

5 minutes ago, bmus1 said:

If they did a Hard Skool EP 2 but with the four studio songs I'd buy that in a heart beat. Keep the live stuff to live releases, or at the very least make it a full LP if you're using live tracks to round out a tracklist.

The big question is if in 2024 will they do another A/B side with Atlas, or will Atlas be the single to push a release containing all 5 songs.

I’m starting to think the latter would be the better way to go. Do a whole EP called Atlas Shrugged containing all the songs they worked on during Covid.

[rocknroll41]

8 minutes ago, alangarcianr said:

GNR is trending on twitter 

we’re back on the charts 

Hope this gives the band some extra fuel to release more stuff 

*X

[GnR Chris]

2 minutes ago, rocknroll41 said:

*X

No.

[Amish]

Has any commented on the piano intro sounding kind of like Sweet Home Alabama?

[star]

So they dropped the song and a video

The watery/blurry/auto-tune fx applied to Axl's voice reminds me of Catcher in the Rye 

 

[GoodOlJohnnyK]

30 minutes ago, rebeldhipi said:

The solo starts on the 1 but the bar before its a 7/8 so one note is missing. 

Im sure its done on purpose. Its actually not that uncommon in rock music to do these things.

Either way, it doesn't work.

2 minutes ago, star said:

The watery/blurry/auto-tune fx applied to Axl's voice reminds me of Catcher in the Rye 

Listening back to it, it sounds like they added the vocal effect to make the vocals sound more current with the backing track. It certainly worked better this time than it did on Hard Skool.

4 minutes ago, Amish said:

Has any commented on the piano intro sounding kind of like Sweet Home Alabama?

I always associated it with Mary Jane's Last Dance, by Tom Petty. But that song, Sweet Home Alabama, and Dani California also share a sort of bouncy rhythm that I'm not crazy about.

[vloors]

Perhaps has been really well received in the youtube comments compared to the last two singles.

This could be the one to take off.

[Kosonen]

12 minutes ago, Amish said:

Has any commented on the piano intro sounding kind of like Sweet Home Alabama?

Sweet home alabamaaa....hey heyyyy

[kingcanyon]

perhaps is trending #12 on youtube

[lost un the jungle]

19 minutes ago, Amish said:

Has any commented on the piano intro sounding kind of like Sweet Home Alabama?

maybe, perhaps!

[James Bond]

I don't hear Sweet Home at all. It's not even the same chord progression.

[ZoSoRose]

2 hours ago, UYI4 said:

I think my only issue with the Final released version of this song is the weird prechorus mixes of the oooooo” sounds or maybe it’s a synth.  They come in quite loud.  

Totally agree with this. It’s apparent with good headphones. Would have liked the low vocals lower and high higher for the chorus too

 

overall, a solid mix though imo

Edited August 18, 2023 by ZoSoRose

[MaskingApathy]

6 hours ago, tboneman said:

Perhaps video already has almost 120k views. This is why I wish HS had had a proper music video. People still like to watch music videos even if it's just live stuff. 

Yeah I'm really wishing now that they had done all this promotion for HS also, it could've really taken off.

6 hours ago, veon said:

Full disclosure: this is probably crazy. However the vinyl only release coupled with  the mythical The General being relegated to a b-side has me thinking a new album may be closer than we think. Otherwise, I feel they would’ve milked this release a la Hard Sokol with multiple vinyl releases and a CD release. I feel that The General as b-side hooks a bunch of vinyl purchases exclusively through the GnR store, and then the same people buy the same songs when the album is announced in the next 3-6 months. 

 

5 hours ago, allwaystired said:

I could see that happening. If (big if) there was to be an album I would think HS, Absurd, Perhaps and General would all be on it. 

I could see it happening too. I think what Slash was saying about getting together to write a new album might be a possibility too, after this stuff is all released. I think he mentioned it because it's something that they've talked about doing.

1 hour ago, GoodOlJohnnyK said:

Spent the morning with the officially released single, and listened to it immediately after also listening to the Village Leaks version. 

Overall, of course, my opinion is unchanged on this song. It's just not for me. I think it's a boring dirge - maybe a good idea, but not fleshed out enough to be a full song. There are some upsides though:

THE GOOD

1. The recording does sound better, for the most part. The Village Leak version is way too busy, for such a simple song. At first I thought I'd miss the lead riff throughout the verses, but I don't. They just distracted from the verse melody. Similarly, the band was wise to remove the high lead line on the "I want to know how it feels..." section. It was needless and a little annoying. The new version with the backing vocals singing a simple ascending "oooh" line with the chord changes is much more effective and actually builds the song with a touch of subtlety, which is nice once in a while from this band. It's also the most 'natural' sounding of the three released singles. Absurd was cool, but it sounded like Slash threw a fresh coat of paint on an old song. Hard Skool is my favorite of the bunch, but in that case it sounds like they shoehorned Axl's old vocals onto a modern track. This song is 20 years old, but if I didn't know that, I likely wouldn't be able to tell. That's a good thing.

2. Slash and Duff, like on Absurd and Hard Skool, simply make this song better. I just won't accept any "the NuGuns fit the song better" bullshit. The NuGuns version sounds like everything else from that era - a bunch of very talented virtuosos playing over each other rather than with each other. This is better than that, and it's because of Slash and Duff. Their parts are slapped on to an existing track, yet somehow still sound more organic and 'fit' the song better than the original tracks did. Slash's verse riff is down in the mix in a good way - the type of riffing we saw a lot on the Illusions, where you have to actually listen for it rather than having it knock you on the head. Duff's bass is prominent, if maybe a *shade* too high in the mix, but I'm not gonna pick that nit. It's a good bassline and it gives the track a bit more swing.

3. TouchTunes fiasco aside, it is nice to see them release something, whether I like it or not. More importantly, they even went so far as to release an actual music video. Live/backstage footage or not, it's refreshing and encouraging to see something resembling effort and a real release from a band of this magnitude. I don't know what it means for the future, and I refuse to get my hopes up, but for one day it feels like something actually happened, and I'll take that.

THE BAD

1. Not *all* of the mixing decisions were good. I personally find the drums way too low in the mix - there are moments where the snare in particular gets totally lost or just sounds weak. 

Furthermore, I thought the addition of the low vocal was a nice touch...but they mixed it too high and at the expense of the *vastly* superior high octave. That scratchy high octave vocal was the best part of the song! Pumping the lower octave up in the mix lessens its impact. Also - that's not the 'demon' voice from Shackler's Revenge, as others have stated. It's just Axl doing a lower octave in the style of Brownstone or Bad Obsession. The demon voice is something different (and likely wouldn't fit this song anyway).

2. Slash's solo is not as bad as everyone says it is, and Robin's wasn't anything special. But it is kind of aimless. There are a few issues with the solo, and one of them isn't Slash's fault: starting the solo a beat early is part of the issue with the transition. It starts on the 8 beat, or on the "4-and," and it's jarring. It sounds like a minor squibble, but it's not - it causes the transition to sound clunky. They actually do the same thing on the demo, but it's not as emphasized due to the mix, and Robin's high bend sort of covers for it. Furthermore, the solo starts good and then just meanders and ends. I think the issue is that the solo section is too short. Slash underplays it at first, which is fine, but then it's never given time to build. Given that these things are often comped together, I'd be curious to hear what Axl and Caram left on the cutting room floor, because something tells me the solo could have been quite good if they'd doubled the amount of bars and actually let it build to something. But they didn't, so it's just there until it's not.

3. The song itself still doesn't have enough going on. It's the bones of the song that are too brittle for me. The verse melody isn't captivating at all, and the "heys" and "mmmmmmaaaaaahhhh"'s and other vocalizations only further accentuate that there's simply not enough substance there. The decision to put two verses back to back to start the song is also a major mistake - that first chorus takes *way* too long to get to. I don't know what else they would have done, but I think that's the point - there's no section of the existing song that would have worked as a transition or bridge, and so they should have written one. This song is undercooked. There's the foundation of a song here, but they didn't see it through, as evidenced by the lyric. They didn't finish it. It's just two verses, a chorus, a solo, a verse, and a chorus. Which would be fine, if it were something catchier and punchier, but it's not - it's plodding and stilted and it just simply needs something else.

4. The lyrics are also half-baked. I don't know what happened to the razor sharp wit and silver tongued lyricist who wrote Locomotive, Breakdown, Dead Horse, and Coma, but he's not here. There's vague and then there's lazy. This is the latter.

THE SURPRISINGLY HAPPY ENDING

I'm actually thrilled that this is out, because I hate the song so fucking much I just wanted it released so we could go on speculating about the *next* release, if there was ever going to be one.

I was actually sad, because I was certain that this would come out and that the next one would be either Atlas Shrugged or State of Grace, two songs I also loathe. I figured that all I had to look forward to was bitching about another bad song. Thankfully, and surprisingly, we got the news today that the next release is The General, which is a song I haven't heard outside of a muffled guitar line that could be slightly made out over a barrage of bar chatter. Now *that's* something newish. That's something I haven't heard. And that's something to be cautiously optimistic about. So on a day where Guns N' Roses released a song I don't like, I'm somehow left with some hope for the rest of the summer as we inch closer to The General's release. And that's something!

This is a great analysis, I agree with all of it. Just wish Slash's rhythm part was louder in the mix like in HS.

56 minutes ago, alangarcianr said:

GNR is trending on twitter 

we’re back on the charts 

Hope this gives the band some extra fuel to release more stuff 

I hope so too!

[nikosgnr]

Intresting...

 

[rebeldhipi]

39 minutes ago, GoodOlJohnnyK said:

Either way, it doesn't work.

To me its works well. Deftones uses the same trick tons to make some parts more "surprising" or intense.

[GNRRHCP98]

1 hour ago, rocknroll41 said:

I’m starting to think the latter would be the better way to go. Do a whole EP called Atlas Shrugged containing all the songs they worked on during Covid.

Was that cover art for Atlas that leaked on Reddit ever determined to be legit? The skeleton on the shoreline one?

I’m thinking either Atlas will be a single at the end of the year, with SOG as the B-side, or like you said, Atlas is the main EP w/ all the reworked locker leak songs and maybe some studio covers?

Edited August 18, 2023 by GNRRHCP98

[rocknroll41]

Just now, GNRRHCP98 said:

Was that cover art for Atlas that leaked on Reddit ever determined to be legit? The skeleton on the shoreline one?

I’m thinking either Atlas will be a single at the end of the year, with SOG as the B-side, or like you said, Atlas is the main EP w/ all the reworked locker leak songs and maybe some studio covers?

That artwork you’re talking about got pulled from Reddit, so maybe it was real, or maybe the Reddit mods didn’t want misinformation to be spread.

[Carburetta]

Getting Paradise City vibes from the video.

[rocknroll41]

Some new thoughts I just had:

Maybe when slash said “HardSkool is older than the other songs we’ve been working on,” he really meant that it’s from like 1998 and all the others are from like 2000. Maybe they really only did work on Perhaps this year, and maybe it really does originate from the 1996 sessions. Maybe the Jackie Chan movie song they were working on at that time was not actually HardSkool.

just a theory.

[James Bond]

37 minutes ago, nikosgnr said:

Intresting...

 

Poor Frank. Still replaced by the replacement he replaced.

[Duwz]

Just now, James Bond said:

Poor Frank. Still replaced by the replacement he replaced.

HAHAHAHAHHAAHHAAHAAHHA this made my day

[GoodOlJohnnyK]

One thing I’ll never understand on these forums is the hatred for Frank Ferrer.