"Sweet Child o' Mine" is a song by American rock band Guns N' Roses. It appeared on their debut album Appetite for Destruction. The song was released in August 1988 as the album's third single, and topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart, becoming the band's only number 1 US single. Billboard ranked it the number 5 song of 1988. Re-released in 1989, it reached number 6 on the UK Singles Chart.
Background and composition
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". Lead singerAxl Rose was listening to the musicians upstairs in his room and was inspired to write lyrics, which he completed 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 a bridge and a guitar solo. When the band recorded 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. An alternate version featuring half a live version, half a newly recorded 1999 version plays during the credits of the movie "Big Daddy".
Music video
The "Sweet Child o' Mine" video depicts the band rehearsing in the Mendiola's Ballroom at Huntington Park, surrounded by crew members. All of the band members' girlfriends at the time were shown in the clip: Rose's girlfriend Erin Everly, whose father is Don Everly of The Everly Brothers; McKagan's girlfriend Mandy Brix, from the all-female rock band the Lame Flames; Stradlin's girlfriend Angela Nicoletti; Adler's girlfriend Cheryl Swiderski; and Slash's girlfriend Sally McLaughlin. Stradlin's dog was also featured. The video was successful on MTV, and helped launch the song to success on mainstream radio. To make "Sweet Child o' Mine" more marketable to MTV and radio stations, the song was edited down from 5:56 to 4:13, for the radio edit/remix, with much of Slash's guitar solo removed. This drew the ire of the band, including Rose, who commented on it in a 1989 interview with Rolling Stone: "I hate the 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." 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" in the same place, but with different shots and filmed in black and white. As of July 2020, the song's music video has over 1.1 billion views on YouTube.
Reception
"Sweet Child o' Mine" placed number 37 on Guitar World's list of the "100 Greatest Guitar Solos." It also came in at number 3 on Blender's 500 Greatest Songs Since You Were Born, and at number 198 on Rolling Stone's The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In March 2005, Q magazine placed it at number 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 1 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 number 7 in VH1's "100 Greatest Songs of the '80s", and placed number 210 on the RIAASongs of the Century list. , the song is ranked as the 76th 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 United States as of March 2012. Guitarist Slash said in 1990, " turned into a huge hit and now it makes me sick. I mean, I like it, but I hate what it represents."
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 said he had not previously heard "Unpublished Critics."
The song was covered by Sheryl Crow on the soundtrack to Big Daddy, and released as a bonus track on her third studio album, The Globe Sessions. The recording was produced by Rick Rubin and Crow. A music video for Crow's version was also released, directed by Stéphane Sednaoui. Crow performed the song live at Woodstock '99. Ultimate Classic Rock profiled the song as part of a series on "Terrible Classic Rock Covers", and Rolling Stone readers named it the fourth worst cover song of all-time. Despite its negative reception, it became a moderate hit in Australia, Canada, Iceland, Ireland and the United Kingdom, and it earned Crow a Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance.
Composer Ramin Djawadi arranged an orchestral piano cover version of the song for the official trailer of Westworld season 3.The song was released as a single by WaterTower Music and was also included in the season 3 soundtrack of Westworld.
