Guns N' Roses' Worst Song Of All Time Is A Bizarre Dumpster Fire, And Reddit Agrees

All of them. All of the Guns N' Roses (GNR) songs where Axl Rose rasp-shrieks are terrible. Too harsh? Ok, fine. It isn't actually all of them. "November Rain," alone, is a gloriously melodramatic and grandiose song suited to musical theater, right down to Slash soloing his unplugged guitar outside the church in the music video. Big "Appetite for Destruction" smashes like "Welcome to the Jungle" and "Sweet Child O' Mine" became megahits for a reason no matter how overplayed. And, there'll always be listeners who consider themselves the truest fans because "Chinese Democracy" was the bestest, most over-the-top, envelope-pushing GNR album ever, or whatever. But we can all agree, GNR also made plenty of stinkers.   

The full catalogue of GNR stinkers is too extensive to go into here but includes songs like "ABSUЯD," which without the backwards R is still, um ... absurd. What band wrote it, again, and why does Rose sound like a BritRock singer? "Get in the Ring" from "Use Your Illusion II," meanwhile, is so trite that you could forget it's on during your first listen. "Shotgun Blues" from the same album is a ghastly, fifth-rate garage-punk-like song that contains nothing of the "blues" in its title. "Riad N' The Bedouins" from "Chinese Democracy" sounds like GNR imitating itself, poorly, with some seriously intolerable Rose vocals. We could go on, but you get the point.

But have no fear, because one GNR track stands head and shoulders above the rest at being the worst. Those true fans we mentioned earlier, on Reddit or otherwise, and all the casuals besides, will have no problem predicting what song we mean. Welcome to "My World," the world where no one wants to be. 

"My World" is flipping awful, and that's the mildest way to put it. It's a bizarre dumpster fire at the end of 1991's "Use Your Illusion II," with synth and drums lifted from Björk's "Army of Me" (an excellent song) and mangled with top-tier cringe, sneer-speak vocals reminiscent of Dave Mustaine's "Hello, me, meet the real me" from "Sweating Bullets" (by Megadeth). Is "My World" meant to be a real song, and not just a weird interlude that lasts less than 90 seconds and gradually incorporates more and more warbling moans? (Those "warbling moans," by the way, are the reason we can't just play the song for you — on the off chance you're reading this at work or during a family dinner — so please enjoy the above photo of Axl Rose instead.) What were Axl Rose, Slash, and the boys thinking?

Well, guess what? Only Rose was thinking on this track — or not thinking, if you like. "My World" is a direct result of Rose wanting to ride the industrial music wave that was being propelled by groups like Nine Inch Nails (NIN). As Ultimate Classic Rock quotes him from 1992, the year after "Use Your Illusion II" came out, Rose and the other band members were "sitting around being a bit bored." He wanted to do something experimental and off-the-cuff, and three hours later they had "My World." And oh boy, does it sound like it.

This isn't only our opinion, either. The Reddit mob on the GNR subreddit more or less concur that "My World" is the trashest of GNR trash, with some outliers peppered in here and there. Granted, invoking Reddit as a source of credibility in basically any domain is a long, long stretch. Reddit is only representative of the sample of people who feel that others care what they say on Reddit. But still, Rose and company need to know, somehow, somewhere, that no fan wants a repeat of "My World." 

Despite it being a spur-of-the-moment crime against humanity, Axl Rose never intended "My World" to be a one-off track. He meant it to be indicative of a general shift in GNR's music style toward "more industrial type things," as Ultimate Classic Rock (UCR) quotes former GNR guitarist Gilby Clarke. Why do this? No idea, except to lose GNR's entire audience. Clarke, by the way, replaced guitarist Izzy Stradlin, who wasn't stradlin' the line about "My World" whatsoever. "I gave it a listen and thought, 'What the f*** is this?'," UCR quotes him. Stradlin left the band two months later, not just because of "My World," but because Rose pushed out anyone else's creative input.

Thankfully, "My World" did turn out to be a one-off, no matter that GNR's next album, "Chinese Democracy," was semi-experimental (as far as GNR is concerned). But, it at least sounded like music, unlike "My World." It was also the band's last album, no matter that they still have over 35 million monthly Spotify listeners and a 2026 North America and Europe tour that will doubtlessly embarrass Rose yet again. (Folks have had a field day with his voice recently.)

Recent GNR concerts have been a long three hours each. That's plenty of time to include dumpster fires like "My World." But, let's hope they stick to the songs that fans want to hear and which made them famous, not the things they thought they wanted to be that yanked them apart.