BLACK DIAMOND AND THE DOLPHIN DANG DUNG TONGKESIN

Top 10 Guns N' Roses Songs
Guns N' Roses ' best songs speak to the anxiety
of a desperate young band trying to find love
and success in the cruel dog-eat-dog world of
Los Angeles. This list of their 10 greatest tracks
ignores a few hits in favor of some album cuts
that have better stood the test of time while
losing none of their snarling urgency.

10. "Paradise City" (from 'Appetite for
Destruction')
Though an album full of despair and anger,
Appetite for Destruction did have its faint rays of
hope. "Paradise City" finds singer Axl Rose
dreaming of a better world "where the grass is
green and the girls are pretty" far away from the
crime and depravity he sees all around him. The
song also features one of the best uses of a
police whistle in a hard rock anthem.

9. "Patience" (from 'G N' R Lies')
Sporting a stripped-down, acoustic sound,
"Patience" recalls the hard-edged vulnerability
of classic Rolling Stones ballads like "Wild
Horses." While never an astonishing singer
technically, Rose has always been able to
convey tenderness and warmth, and this song
highlights his talents nicely. Stepping away from
the conventions of hard rock on "Patience,"
GNR hinted at the stylistic risks they'd take on
their subsequent albums.

8. "November Rain" (from 'Use Your
Illusion I')
Axl in full-on sap mode. Channeling his inner
Elton John, Rose wrote this lush, ridiculously
melodramatic piano-with-strings weeper for a
true love. Hardcore fans may have rolled their
eyes, but there was no denying the emotional
sweep of "November Rain" and its willingness to
reach for the truly epic. Contemporary rock
bands aspiring to write lighter-worthy arena
ballads almost always crib from this source.

7. "Double Talkin' Jive" (from 'Use Your
Illusion I')
One of the underrated creative forces within the
band was guitarist Izzy Stradlin. He takes over
lead vocals on this track that he wrote, a nasty
short-story portrait of a lowdown hood who's
just looking for his next payday. There are
grander rock songs on the Use Your Illusion
albums, but there are few that are as instantly
memorable as "Double Talkin' Jive," from its
turbo-charged drums to its blazing solo and
Spanish-guitar outro.

6. "It's So Easy" (from 'Appetite for
Destruction')
Some of Guns N' Roses' best songs were never
singles because their lyrical content was way too
risque for radio. A perfect example is "It's So
Easy," a powerful but deeply frightening
exploration of a loveless, depraved society
obsessed with cheap sex and copious amounts
of questionable substances. Let's be clear: This
is an ugly song about people's basest desires,
but like earlier groups such as the Sex Pistols,
GNR bracingly illustrate that ugliness from the
inside out.

5. "Estranged" (from 'Use Your Illusion
II')
Axl Rose lays it all on the line on the other great
sprawling ballad from the Use Your Illusion
records. A combination of lost-love song and
midlife crisis, "Estranged" is nine minutes of
disheartened confusion as Rose whispers and
whimpers over a stately piano and Slash's
beautiful guitar solo. The GNR frontman survives
an emotional rollercoaster in the song, but just
barely.

4. "Out Ta Get Me" (from 'Appetite for
Destruction')
One of the best paranoid diatribes in hard rock,
"Out Ta Get Me" rants and rages against
authority. Part of the track's power is that it's
not entirely clear if Rose's anger is even
justified: Are the cops really after him or is it all
in his head? Regardless, the song captures most
adolescents' pent-up frustration with an adult
world that tries to impose its will on them.

3. "Yesterdays" (from 'Use Your Illusion
II')
Arguably the most underrated of GNR's hits,
"Yesterdays" is an intensely melodic kiss-off to
the past. The band never put much stock in
optimism, but here Slash's guitar and Rose's
piano surge with hopefulness as Axl tries to turn
his frown upside-down. But even in this
relatively sunny song, Rose understands that
childhood pain cannot ever be completely
forgotten, a theme that haunted the Use Your
Illusion albums' desire for transcendence.

2. "Sweet Child o' Mine" (from 'Appetite
for Destruction')
It was a song that Slash thought was silly
initially. But "Sweet Child o' Mine" went on to
rewrite the rulebook for '80s hard rock, showing
a dozen crappy hair-metal bands how you could
write an expressive love song without losing
your dignity in the process. As they
demonstrated throughout Appetite , "Sweet Child
o' Mine" announced that GNR were a new kind
of band, one that was tougher and meaner than
their competition but also more poetic and
soulful as well.

1. "Welcome to the Jungle" (from
'Appetite for Destruction')
Before it became the song to psych up
audiences at football stadiums, "Welcome to the
Jungle" was just a startling assault of guitars and
Axl Rose's full-throttled howls. It's hard to think
of a better examination of Los Angeles sleaze in
all its neon-tacky glory than "Welcome to the
Jungle" - you can practically hear the city's
denizens chew up and spit out the next crop of
wide-eyed newcomers looking for fame and
fortune. This was the world where Guns N'
Roses came together in the 1980s, but as this
song (and the album that contained it) proved,
they were talented enough to capture its grimy,
scandalous essence better than any other band
around them.