11 GUNS N’ROSES Appetite for Destruction
Three decades haven’t dimmed this towering gutter-glam opus. Come, sweet child, as we rank every track.
1| “PARADISE CITY”
There is no postcode. Only a magical metal Narnia where the grass is green, the girls are pretty, the Jack Daniel’s flows like an 80-proof river and the pants are never not white leather.
2| “SWEET CHILD O’ MINE”
Love is a girl with eyes of the bluest skies, hair that reminds Axl of a warm safe place and a guitar solo long enough to floss to.
3| “WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE”
You know where you are, right? Did you bring your sha-na-nanana-na kneepads? Because we got fun and games!
4| “ROCKET QUEEN”
Weirdly not an ode to a female astronaut, though she does seem to know a lot about combustibles.
5| “MY MICHELLE”
The Beatles’ Michelle was a French girl so belle she made Paul Mccartney turn bilingual; GN’R’S Michelle has a daddy who works in porno and she gets her dope for free. It’s really diversified, this muse business.
6| “MR BROWNSTONE”
The song you told your mother was about a superfriendly neighbour—he loves to dance, so he just keeps knocking—and totally 1,000 per cent not slang for heroin. 7| “YOU’RE CRAZY” God bless the maniac so feral and ruthless and out to get her own Hanoi rocks off that Axl actually admits he’s riding shotgun on her Crazy Train.
8| “IT’S SO EASY”
Things you can get away with when you’re GN’R: seducing little sisters, drunk-crashing cars, deciding bicycle shorts are just the thing to bring that bandana-and-a-blazer stage look together.
9| “THINK ABOUT YOU”
The lyrics say, “I offer my heart to you in a Hallmark card”; the music says, “I want to wrap your skull in barbed wire and set it on fire.” 10| “NIGHTRAIN” Welcome to the Appetite Express! Please stow your rattlesnake suitcase and proceed to the dining car for a Molotov cocktail and a cigarette or seven. We should be pulling into Hades around, oh, 4 AM.
11| “OUT TA GET ME”
Maybe they’re out ta get you. Or maybe they just want to talk to you about the bike shorts, bro.
12| “ANYTHING GOES”
The boys at their Sunset skeeziest, proposing the kind of al fresco sex you will almost definitely need a tetanus shot for later.