This Song: Sweet Child O' Mine

Guns N' Roses

Whenever anyone asks me what kind of music I like, lights and bells go off in my head like a pinball machine, eras and artists pinging and flipping to the fore. But the truth, the simple answer, is that I’m a sucker for a good hook.

Hard rock and heavy metal are definitively not my thing, but I do love me a soppy power ballad like Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” and, I mean, who doesn’t love Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me”?

In part, because it went again type—and the punk, pop, and new wave of its era that I preferred—for several months in 1987, Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine” was the music behind the message on my answering machine. (And it was not easy to get the right part of the song playing on one cassette player while you recorded it with your voiceover onto the tiny cassette in your answering machine. Just saying.)

It would not turn out to be a good year—one of the worst in my life. But that song and seeing Axl Rose snake his skinny body around still brings me the same goofy good cheer it did back then.

Here’s hoping these throwbacks light up your day.

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