Celebrate 30 Years of Guns N’ Roses ‘Appetite For Destruction’ With The Album’s Greatest Jams
Which is your all-time favorite?
Depending on your age it may be hard to believe, but on July 21 Guns N’ Roses‘ Appetite For Destruction turns thirty years old.
Some amazing music happened in the 80s, but by 1987 much of what was broadcast on VH1 and MTV was tailored more for glossy, big-budget videos than classic albums. With Appetite, GN’R rattled the pop music landscape with an immortal platter of good old-fashioned sex, drugs, and rock & roll powered by Axl’s banshee vocals, Slash’s guitar heroics, and a boatload of truly great songs. It didn’t hurt that the whole band looked cool as fuck and put out some pretty memorable MTV videos themselves.
Dropping a perfect record on the masses transformed GNR from obscure Hollywood sleaze-rockers to international icons overnight. It wasn’t exactly a wasteland on the pop charts in 1987, either–the Beastie Boys Licensed to Ill (which actually came out in ’86), U2’s The Joshua Tree and Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet all sold millions that year. But Appetite outshone them all, and went on to become one of the bestselling albums in history.
The biggest hits off Appetite are such classic rock standards now that it kind of seems almost pointless to rank them, but we’ll give it a shot anyway. Below are the videos for the album’s five greatest cuts, ranked in order of overall awesomeness.
Quibble with the order if you must, but you gotta admit that these are all epic jams.
5. “Nightrain”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Gu3gDhESRY
4. “It’s So Easy”
3. “Paradise City”
2. “Sweet Child o’ Mine”
1. “Welcome to the Jungle”
For the opening guitar line alone, you gotta give GNR’s signature jam the top slot. But feel free to disagree.