Appetite For Destruction

About

<b>100 Best Albums</b> Early on in the history of Guns N’ Rose, Axl Rose was driving around with his friend Michelle when Elton John’s “Your Song” came on the radio. Gee, Michelle said, I wish someone would write a song that beautiful about <i>me</i>. So, Axl went home and tried. The first draft didn’t sit right—it was too reductive, too romantic, too much like a <i>song</i>—so he started over: “Your daddy works in porno now that mommy’s not around/She used to love her heroin, but now she’s underground” (“My Michelle”). Yeah, it was bracing, Michelle said. But it was the truth. It isn’t just that <i>Appetite</i> is mean—though it i. It’s that it never flinches at how it feel, no matter how ugly. The drug songs aren’t about getting high, they’re about blacking out (“Mr. Brownstone,” “Nightrain”). The sex songs don’t relish the physical act so much as the power that comes with it (“Anything Goes”). When they give you an anthem, it’s against a backdrop of filth and misery (“Paradise City”). And when they give you a ballad, it’s with the paranoid sense that nothing so pure could actually be real (the dark outro of “Sweet Child o’ Mine”). Conquering their conquests isn’t enough: They want to degrade them and trade high-fives about it later (“It’s So Easy”). .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

Start your shelf to read the full take →