10 Rock Music Acts Who Peaked With Their First Album

by Andrew Pollard

1. Guns N' Roses - Appetite For Destruction

If looking at album releases and the subsequent quality of those releases, Guns N' Roses' ranking of quality near-enough reads in reverse chronological order.

G N' R's worst album is their last album, Chinese Democracy. Behind that in the stinker stakes is their second-to-last album, The Spaghetti Incident?, and then, if you take away second album G N' R Lies - which is probably just above Chinese Democracy and The Spaghetti Incident? when it comes to quality - the rest of the list stacks up as each older album being better than its respective follow-up.

All of this is a long, slightly convoluted way of saying Guns N' Roses best album is debut offering Appetite for Destruction, and the band largely got worse - even if only mildly so - with each album from there on out.

1991's Use Your Illusion I and 1993's User Your Illusion II are both great albums, but neither can quite match the overall brilliance of 1987's Appetite for Destruction - an album that features Welcome to the Jungle, Sweet Child O Mine, and Paradise City amongst its heavy-hitting singles.

Appetite for Destruction was a marvellous moment in time that perfectly captured everything great about Guns N' Roses, and it was a record that set them on the path to superstardom.

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Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main day job, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks/Saints, Jamie Hayter, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg. Where his beloved Wrexham AFC is concerned, Andrew is co-host of the Fearless in Devotion podcast, which won the Club Podcast of the Year gong at the 2024 FSA Awards.