Guns n Roses: Critical Rehab

I think "They Don't Care About Us" is a much more ambiguous case than "One in a Million". I'm not defending the lyrics but they're not nearly as explicit in their statement as "One in a Million" is: Jackson's explanation is at least plausible, if naive. Besides, he actually re-recorded the song, changing the questionable lyrics, and censored the original lines in the video. No way is it on par with the lines that Christgau quoted.

Jackson changed his lyrics because they got bad publicity and he didn't want the album pulled from stores, let's be clear

He still changed the lyrics and apologized, plus he never claimed his original intention was to denigrate or insult Jewish people: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Don%27t_Care_About_Us#Dispute_regarding_lyrics_and_context

Axl, OTOH, said this:

In response to the following accusations of homophobia, Rose initially stated that he was "pro-heterosexual" and did not understand homosexuals, and spoke of negative experiences in his past, such as a seemingly friendly man who let him crash on his hotel room floor and then tried to rape him.[4] He later softened this stance, and insisted that he was not homophobic, pointing out that some of his icons, such as Freddie Mercury and Elton John, as well as David Geffen, the head of his record label, were bisexual or gay

Several times Axl defended his use of the word 'nigger'. In one 1989 interview, he stated that he had used the word to signify "somebody that is basically a pain in your life, a problem... the word nigger doesn't necessarily mean black," and referenced the John Lennon song "Woman Is the Nigger of the World" as using the word in a positive context.[4] Rose also discussed the use of the word by the hip hop group Niggaz With Attitude (NWA) and was occasionally photographed wearing an NWA hat from then on. Other times he recalled personal experiences which had driven him to write such lyrics, such as feeling intimidated by the black street merchants selling gold chains.[7] Rose also claimed that he had used the word because it was considered taboo.[8]

By 1992, however, Rose seemed to have gained new perspective on the song and its lyrics. In one interview, he conceded that the word had been used as an insult, but added, "I was pissed off about some black people that were trying to rob me. I wanted to insult those particular black people. I didn't want to support racism." [8]

i was replying to sund4r's point, obv axl is a dick

I once bought a homeless woman a slice of pizza who yelled at me she wanted soup. We got her the soup. You can get your own.

Can anyone translate?

full paragraph:

Now that the smoke's cleared a little, any desperate, misguided attacks have been just that, a pathetic stab at gossip, some lame vindictiveness, the usual entitlement crap, he's obsessed, crazy, volatile, a hater. I once bought a homeless woman a slice of pizza who yelled at me she wanted soup. We got her the soup. You can get your own.

translation: "people say I'm crazy? well check this out."

Michael Jackson is basically chaotic good & Axl Rose is lawful evil. If you are in battle Axl will probably kill extra people just to keep himself safe which will benefit your party but Michael is your man otherwise, lawful evil characters will fuck you every time and do not actually give a shit about who they hurt whereas chaotic good players can be Eladrin, who possess Darkvision, the ability to see in the dark & are resistant to cold & fire

"such as feeling intimidated by the black street merchants selling gold chains."

lol go back to indiana dimwit

when you get off the bus from the sticks you have to run the gauntlet to the hairdresser

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmjrpfRQtB1qfvxijo1_500.jpg

https://7or7va.bay.livefilestore.com/y1m4FELEwDeqsG_0G2oOoI7hvykP3DstLMEUag7voni_8sIVkjXb5AwbpK8EY6GvXmQnCaxfvIvvXbH5qwu9t4QFarBf86jjJm5rNVPPbrpL9OXVYhS0-2cUvfOCVwzynL332PWD1zy6Hg/Welcome%20To%20The%20Jungle%203.jpg

Michael Jackson is basically chaotic good & Axl Rose is lawful evil.

lol aero

*rolls D20*

Michael Jackson is basically chaotic good & Axl Rose is lawful evil. If you are in battle Axl will probably kill extra people just to keep himself safe which will benefit your party but Michael is your man otherwise, lawful evil characters will fuck you every time and do not actually give a shit about who they hurt whereas chaotic good players can be Eladrin, who possess Darkvision, the ability to see in the dark & are resistant to cold & fire

This is awesome.

BTW, if we're quoting from wiki summaries, the "They Don't Care About Us" summary does really depict Michael in the best light, naive chaotic good or no. He's very defensive. He even busts out the hoary tautology "It's not anti-Semitic because I'm not a racist person."

Wiki claims he also trotted out the "some of my best friends are Jewish" defense.

a negative interpretation of that song never occurred to me but then i was like eleven at the time

I should also say I don't expect either Axl or Michael to have coherent views on anything, let alone the contextual nuances of racial epithets. To be fair, those atypical MJ lyrics were an outlier of sorts in an otherwise mostly innocuous career. But Axl's purported racism and xenophobia I'm not sure is any worse than his consistent virulent misogyny.

Did GNR ever dare play that song live? What did the other dudes in the band ever say about the song in the press?

I hate them both. Problem solved!

We talked about that a bit upthead. xp

Axl disowned One in a Million, didn't play it live, had it removed from subsequent pressings/reissues/compilations etc

So you can't buy Lies anymore?

http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg218/scaled.php?server=218&filename=michaeljackson19kt2.jpg&res=landing

xp: you can. he just said he was gonna take it off, but didn't

ah. I was going off that long bio piece posted upthread

there's a bit of Slash's memoir about how offended/embarrassed he was about the song and having played on it

just reading that MJ entry and lol'ing at the stupidity of this:

While the New York Times asserted the use of racial slurs in "They Don't Care About Us", they were silent on other racial slurs in the album. The Notorious B.I.G. says "nigger" on "This Time Around," another song on the HIStory album, but it did not attract media attention.

it still bugs me that we talk about this but have to just accept the fact that in a lot of the most interesting best music being made, you can either make your peace with hearing "bitch" and "whore" a lot or you can go fuck yourself

that too

it still bugs me that we talk about this but have to just accept the fact that in a lot of the most interesting best music being made, you can either make your peace with hearing "bitch" and "whore" a lot or you can go fuck yourself

The debate is whether is applies to explicit or implicit racism, though I suppose that rarely does the best or most interesting music espouse racism (at least not since the peaks of PE and Ice Cube).

Yeah, the same people who will excoriate Axl Rose seem to turn a blind eye to misogyny and gross worldviews in rap music for some reason.

yeah nobody's ever called Axl Rose a misogynist, what's up with that

oh misread the post, nvm

Yeah, the same people who will excoriate Axl Rose seem to turn a blind eye to misogyny and gross worldviews in rap music for some reason.

and vica versa.

haha who are these "same people"

strawgoons

Yeah, the same people who will excoriate Axl Rose seem to turn a blind eye to misogyny and gross worldviews in rap music for some reason.

― Poliopolice, Thursday, April 19, 2012 10:27 AM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so do you know this guy frogbs?

re: axl + hip-hop + misogyny, 'my world' is pretty underrated. it's better than 'estranged' anyway

no way dogg estranged is awesome

estranged is so good.

shall we do a close read on the lyrics to see which song is the victor?

"You wan'da step into my world
It's a sociopsychotic state of bliss
You've been delayed in the real world
How many times have you hit and missed?"
vs.
"When you're talkin' to yourself
And nobody's home
You can fool yourself
You came in this world alone, alone"

oh my distorted smile, guess what I'm doing now

shall we do a close read on the lyrics to see which song is the victor?

― Philip Nunez, Thursday, April 19, 2012 1:25 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^the only reliable metric for comparing the quality of two pieces of music IMO

might be coincidence, but it's striking that both songs start out in the second person, and end with the same word on the A part of the ABAB. My World, though, clearly packs more ideas in the first few lines, so on information density alone, it's already ahead.

it's also a putrid techno hip hop pastiche whereas "Estranged" is one of the band's most musically ambitious rock operas

lol sorry that came out pretty hongro

Yeah, I agree with some dude. Love "Estranged," skip "My World." The coda of "Estranged" is one of my favorite bits on those albums.

my world is like "what if the announcer from a monster truck rally commercial did a rap record with trent reznor?"

c'mon, my world isn't THAT good.

Do rock guys make poor attempts at rap anymore? Would love to see recent examples of this.

my world is like "what if the announcer from a monster truck rally commercial did a rap record with trent reznor?"

umm wtf that would only be the best album ever

"Your cat-scan shows disfiguration
I wanna laugh myself to death
With a misfired synapse
with a bent configuration
I'll hold the line while you gasp for breath"

ok so i'm not as familiar with medical technology as someone has howard hughes-ish as axl is, but is that how CAT scans work? also, isn't it neurons that fire across a synapse? "misfired synapse" sounds like bullshit. and how can it have a "bent configuration"? "I'll hold the line while you gasp for breath" Axl's talking with Stephanie Seymour on the phone WHILE she's getting a CAT scan?

Still, bullshit content is more interesting than the contentless mush of:

So nobody ever told you baby
How it was gonna be
What'll happen to you baby?
Guess we'll have to wait and see