There's really not a bad song on Appetite or either Use Your Illusion. It's just that they had a lot of HUGE singles. I remember seeing November Rain daily for like 2 years as a kid.

Sorry, I strongly dispute your brass tacks. Too bad you missed it when Appetite came out, but it monumentally transcended its genre, an energizing salvation for mainstream music. By time November Rain etc. came out, GnR (and mainstream rock) was done, spent, sold out to flaccid "hold up your lighter" arena rock. If Use Your Illusion had been edited down to a single album, as it really should have been, it still would have been a mediocre 80s hair metal genre album, released two years too late. The torch had been passed to Pixies and Jane's Addiction and Sonic Youth and grunge, and those of yas willing to endure the vapid largesse of Axl's white leather suit phase apparently missed the original point of Guns n Roses, "serrated rock tunes" and let it fly abandon. Other than an occasional ironic listen to Def Leopard's Hysteria, none of that hair era warrants revisiting, IMO, with the exception of Appetite for Destruction. It holds up, with or without remastering, almost start to finish, minus the dipshitty mysogeny. 8/12 anyway. I effin love Mr Brownstone.

"I mean, let’s get to brass-tacks here, the band is recognised far more for their melancholic ballads of “November Rain”, “Don’t Cry” and “Civil War” than for the more serrated hard-rock tunes."

Album Rating: 3.5

I'm glad you enjoy this as much as you do, but I still don't think it's held up as perfectly as you say. Really solid rock album imo and nothing more.

Album Rating: 4.5

Considering Axl had been working on November Rain years before Appetite had even been recorded (hell the band decided to record Sweet Child O Mine over November Rain for this album), I don’t really see how the song is selling out when it had always been meant to be a ballad. Don’t see how either Use Your Illusions are selling out when they exemplified maturity in sound; they still have some of their fastest and most aggressive songs while displaying a scattershot display of everyone’s influences, it wasn’t like Axl became the sole songwriter of the Illusion albums, everyone (except Matt and Dizzy) had their own hand at writing their own songs.

"If Use Your Illusion had been edited down to a single album, as it really should have been, it still would have been a mediocre 80s hair metal genre album, released two years too late."

no just...no

"If Use Your Illusion had been edited down to a single album, as it really should have been, it still would have been a mediocre 80s hair metal genre album, released two years too late."

no just...no [2]

Album Rating: 4.5

Also a belated note to your comment, Pixies had been releasing albums (and their biggest stuff, at that) before Appetite, Jane’s Addiction’s debut dropped barely a year after Appetite dropped, and Sonic Youth, frankly, only released one essential album with staying power and relevance in the 90s. So I don’t know how “the torch” was handed to any of these bands when their importance and impact already predated Appetite for Destruction and the Use Your Illusion albums becoming overshadowed by Nirvana single handedly making alternative rock/grunge the pop of contemporary music?

Pretty much everything this band has done has been incredibly unimpressive given their success.

And besides, alt rock was only relevant from about 1992-1997, which is when it handed the torch to the likes of Limp Bizkit and Creed.

Tossed this on shuffle the last couple days for workouts and its been sweet ... needless to say though appetite was an intro to rock for me so itll always hold that special place.