10 Greatest Hair Metal Songs
2. Welcome To The Jungle - Guns N Roses
Towards the end of the '80s, the hair metal scene was starting to look just a little bit bloated. While not necessarily on the way out just yet, the newer acts coming down the pipeline weren't necessarily going to give the seasoned veterans like Motley Crue or Whitesnake a run for their money with the same style of Aquanet in their hair. From the sound of Welcome to the Jungle though, you would have sworn that an act like Guns N Roses crawled out of the gutter.
It almost feels strange calling this hair metal on principle. If you look at the mood that GNR are going for, this is miles away from something like Poison. And yet there's something about it that made it fit right in with the rest of the music, taking the usual trappings of glam rock and putting a little more dirt into the delivery.
In fact, you could probably argue that this was the reason why bands like Ratt and Poison started to become irrelevant as the years went on. Here was a band that was in the thick of hair metal and doing it much better than any of the other acts could dream of doing. Grunge may have been the killing blow, but this was the warning shot for the rest of the hair metal bands to be on their toes.