AllMusic.com says the following of The Beatles' self-titled album: "Each song on the sprawling double album The Beatles is an entity to itself, as the band touches on anything and everything they can. This makes for a frustratingly scattershot record or a singularly gripping musical experience, depending on your view, but what makes the White Album interesting is its mess."

And yet, the editorial staff derides Use Your Illusion for being somewhat eccletic in its content and diversity, and claims that roughly half of the double album is filler. And while UYI does have several weak tracks - So Fine, My World, Pretty Tied Up, Bad Apples, Shotgun Blues - and while tracks like Estranged and Coma border on pretentious, I defy any on this board to find an album as prententious and as rife with filler as The White Album. The White Album has some of the greatest songs the Beatles ever wrote, most notably Revolution 1, Helter Skelter and While My Guitar Gently Weeps, but it also has some tracks that are so awful they could be mistaken for John Cage. But John Lennon is a saint and Axl Rose is an asshole, so let's gloss over the major failings of one of the best selling albums of all-time and play up the major failings of another.

ross_rifle113 wrote:

a bunch of stuff

I agree. Coma is one of my favorite sings ever. And the GN'R version of KOHD is just really powerful.

Also I think I've said it before, but the alternate lyrics to Don't Cry are way better IMHO. Having it as one long song would have been cool though. But supposedly what happened was they finished the track and then one day Axl came in all excited with a new set of lyrics. So they got the master tracks and he sang his new verses over it. He only redid the verses, which is why the chorus sounds EXACTLY the same on both tracks. Also, the ridiculously long note he holds at the end track is studio magic. The live version of the song is a lot less bombastic, but it's still cool in its own way.

maybe not ALL studio part of it is definitely looped.

I would definitely agree that even if you don't like a lot of the stuff the Beatles did, you do have to respect the groundbreaking advancements they made in music production. And once they had established themselves in the industry and obtained enough influence to do whatever they felt like, they did. They could have kept playing goofy pop songs about holding hands, but they chose to experiment with different styles and production techniques and see what they were capable of. In their later career they made music because they wanted to make music, not because they especially cared about any sort of payout, and you have to respect that sort of artistry and integrity. But while their overall accomplishments and impact on the music industry should never be belitted, they still did write some terrible songs over the years. Not every experiment was a success, and McCartney always seemed like he was trying to push the band back towards its cheesy pop roots.