Sweet Child O' Mine

The guitar introduction to this song has become so ingrained in popular consciousness that it's almost impossible to hear it fresh — but try: a single note descending in a pattern that sounds simultaneously playful and searching, like someone trying to find their way back to something they've half-forgotten. Slash built that figure from a melody that came to him almost unconsciously, and its apparent simplicity is deceptive; it carries a quality of memory, of looking at something beloved from a slight distance. Axl Rose's voice enters softly at first, almost conversational, his tone warmer and more controlled than his usual register allows, and the song stays in that tender space for its first two thirds before the whole thing pivots and the production opens up into something enormous and slightly uncontained. The rhythm section underneath is Appetite for Destruction at its most patient — Duff McKagan's bass sitting firmly beneath the melody, Steven Adler's drums unhurried. Released in 1987, this was Guns N' Roses showing that behind the chaos and the controversy was a band capable of genuine feeling. The lyrical core is simply adoration — specific, concrete, looking at a person and being overwhelmed by them. It plays at arenas and in bedrooms, at high school dances and in headphones at 2 a.m., because it's one of those songs that seems to describe whatever you're already feeling when you reach for it.