Sweet Child o' Mine

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"Sweet Child o' Mine" is a song by the American rock band Guns N' Roses, featured on their debut album, Appetite for Destruction (1987). Released in August 1988 as the album's third single, the song topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart, becoming the band's first and only number-one single in the U.S.. Billboard ranked it as the No. 5 song for 1988. It reached number six on the UK Singles Chart, when re-released in 1989.

Video Sweet Child o' Mine

Background and composition

Lead guitarist Slash has been quoted as having an initial disdain for the song due to its roots as simply a "string skipping" exercise and a joke at the time. During a jam session at the band's house in the Sunset Strip, drummer Steven Adler and Slash were warming up and Slash began to play a "circus" melody while making faces at Adler. Rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin asked Slash to play it again. Stradlin came up with some chords, Duff McKagan created a bassline and Adler planned a beat. In his autobiography, Slash said "within an hour my guitar exercise had become something else". Meanwhile, lead singer Axl Rose was listening to the musicians upstairs in his room and was inspired to write lyrics, which became complete by the following afternoon. He based it on his girlfriend Erin Everly, and declared that Lynyrd Skynyrd served as an inspiration "to make sure that we'd got that heartfelt feeling". On the next composing session in Burbank, the band added both a bridge and a guitar solo.

While the band was recording demos with producer Spencer Proffer, he suggested adding a breakdown at the song's end. The musicians agreed, but were not sure what to do. Listening to the demo in a loop, Rose started saying to himself, "Where do we go? Where do we go now?" and Proffer suggested that he sing that.

Maps Sweet Child o' Mine

Music video

The "Sweet Child o' Mine" video depicts the band rehearsing in the Huntington Ballroom at Huntington Beach, surrounded by crew members. All of the band members' girlfriends at the time were shown in the clip. Rose was dating Erin Everly at the time, whose father is Don Everly of The Everly Brothers fame. McKagan's girlfriend Mandy Brix from the all-female rock band The Lame Flames was there, as was Izzy's girlfriend Angela Nicoletti, Adler's girlfriend Cheryl Swiderski and Slash's girlfriend Sally McLaughlin. Stradlin's dog was also featured. The video was extremely successful on MTV, and helped launch the song to success on mainstream radio.

In an effort to make "Sweet Child o' Mine" more marketable to MTV and radio stations, the song was cut from 5:56 to 4:59, for the video/radio edit, with much of Slash's guitar solo removed. This move drew the ire of the band members, including Rose, who commented on it in a 1989 interview with Rolling Stone: "I hate the radio edit of 'Sweet Child O' Mine.' Radio stations said, "Well, your vocals aren't cut." "My favorite part of the song is Slash's slow solo; it's the heaviest part for me. There's no reason for it to be missing except to create more space for commercials, so the radio-station owners can get more advertising dollars. When you get the chopped version of 'Paradise City' or half of 'Sweet Child' and 'Patience' cut, you're getting screwed." The video uses the same edits as the radio version.

A 7-inch vinyl format and cassette single were released. The album version of the song was included on the US single release, while the UK single was the "edit/remix" version. The 12" vinyl format also contained the longer LP version. The b-side to the single is a non-album, live version of "It's So Easy".

On an interview on Eddie Trunk's New York radio show in May 2006, Rose stated that his original concept for the video focused on the theme of drug trafficking. According to Rose, the video was to depict an Asian woman carrying a baby into a foreign land, only to discover at the end that the child was dead and filled with heroin. This concept was rejected by Geffen Records.

There is also an alternative video for "Sweet Child o' Mine" with different shots, all in black and white.

Guns N' Roses - Sweet Child O' Mine Â» Vidplay

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Reception

"Sweet Child o' Mine" placed No. 37 on Guitar World's list of the "100 Greatest Guitar Solos." It also came in at number three on Blender's 500 Greatest Songs Since You Were Born, and at No. 198 on Rolling Stone's The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In March 2005, Q magazine placed it at No. 6 in its list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks. On a 2004 Total Guitar magazine poll, the introduction's famous riff was voted number-one riff of all-time by the readers of the magazine. It was also in Rolling Stone's 40 Greatest Songs that Changed the World. It places No. 7 in VH1's "100 Greatest Songs of the '80s", and placed No. 210 on the RIAA Songs of the Century list.

The song is currently ranked as the 104th greatest song of all time, as well as the best song of 1987, by Acclaimed Music. The song has sold 2,609,000 digital copies in the US as of March 2012.

Janet Devlin - Sweet Child Of Mine (With Lyrics) Live Show 3 - YouTube

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Australian Crawl controversy

In 2015, the web page of the Australian music TV channel MAX published an article by music writer Nathan Jolly that noted similarities between "Sweet Child o' Mine" and the song "Unpublished Critics" by the Australian band Australian Crawl, from 1981. The article included both songs, inviting readers to compare the two. It also cited a reader's comment on an earlier article that had originally drawn attention to the similarities between the songs. As of May 2015, this comment no longer appeared on the earlier article. The story went viral quickly, encouraging several comments on both the MAX article and the suggestion that "Unpublished Critics" had influenced "Sweet Child o' Mine", including one from Duff McKagan, bass player with Guns N' Roses when "Sweet Child o' Mine" was written and recorded. McKagan found the similarities between the songs "stunning," but admitted that he had not previously heard "Unpublished Critics."