‘One in a Million’: Everything wrong with Guns N’ Roses in one song
Guns N’ Roses never claimed to mince any of their words when they started. Some of their best moments in the early days were them getting into trouble, but no matter what setback they faced, they always came out looking like seasoned badasses who could gladly kick the ass of any who managed to come their way. Then again, there were a few times when they got a bit too comfortable with what they could say, and ‘One In a Million’ is the moment where all the nastiness of the group came to a head.
Then again, was Guns N’ Roses ever that clean to begin with? They had their sensitive side, to be sure, but there were still a lot of seedy sides of what Axl Rose talked about that never sat that well with people, like when he thought that he could dip his toes into casual misogyny on songs like ‘It’s So Easy’ or managing to have sex with drummer Steven Adler’s girlfriend on the floor of the studio during ‘Rocket Queen’.
Considering the debaucherous behaviour that they got into on tour, GNR Lies should have been the best time for them to take things down a notch. Since the whole EP was supposed to be made with the band all playing together in one room, many spontaneous moments come from them casually working off each other, especially when they light up their ballad ‘Patience’.
As everything should be grinding to a halt, ‘One In a Million’ disrupts everything. Written entirely by Rose, this is supposed to be from the perspective of someone looking at the new blood coming into California and complaining about the seedy side of the city that most people want to keep under wraps.
At least, that’s what the arbiters of good taste pray that the tune was about. Because if we had to take this entire song seriously, this would have been enough to get the band cancelled years before that was a buzzword, complete with Rose casually dropping homophobic and racial slurs throughout the track and even having the gall to ad-lib ‘THAT’S RIGHT’ after he says every one of them.
Even when he did catch fire for the song, Rose defended himself by saying that he didn’t intend for it to describe an entire race of people, instead thinking that it was supposed to mean low-lives. But if you take his comments with a grain of salt, it’s still one of the most uncomfortable listening experiences ever put out by a major band, especially when you look at the fact that Slash is half-black on his mother’s side.
To the rest of the band’s credit, none seemed all that comfortable with the tune, and there was never a chance that they would play it live. Because even if it could be argued that Rose is playing a character, you would have to assume that he’s intensely method acting or there’s one side of him that actually believes everything that he’s singing about.
Although Guns N’ Roses used to run towards this kind of controversy and eventually made a cover of a Charles Manson song to show their lack of good taste, ‘One In a Million’ might be a little bit worse. Anyone can try to latch themselves to a controversial figure to get attention, but when you start making the controversial material yourself, that’s when things start looking a bit strange.
