Tracer Rounds: The Best Damn Songwriting You Never Appreciated
Can we finally give Guns ‘n Roses their due ~
Brant, 19 September 2016
Things have been a little too heavy lately, and we need to talk about something completely different… So can we just take a step back and spend a few minutes admiring what totally bad-ass, criminally-under-rated, and never-appreciated songwriters the guys from Guns’n Roses were? Sure, we all know the ‘hits’ – Welcome to the Jungle, November Rain, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, You Could Be Mine, and Sweet Child o’ Mine – and the ‘scandal’ songs like Used to Love Her, or It’s So Easy. But once you get beyond the radio tunes (or heck, even with the radio tunes) the quality of songwriting you get from the band so far exceeds their contemporaries that they’re not even in the same galaxy.
Back in the late-80s, the popular talk was comparing GnR to The Rolling Stones, under the premise that supposedly no other band had conquered the rock and roll world on their own terms to the degree that GnR did. That was typical rock journalist hyperbole, of course. But honestly, the depth of songwriting, quality of musicianship, and production was blowing most other acts at the time out of the water – even GnR’s supposed contemporaries. Motley Crue didn’t figure out how to write a song until their 4th album; Poison never quite did. Ratt’s riffs were impeccable, but aside from the one-off lyrical curiosity like Wanted Man, they didn’t keep up. Great White? Slaughter? Bulletboys? XYZ? Rough Cutt? Firehouse? Please. Don’t embarrass yourself suggesting them.
