I'm all verklempt.

If you want to feel old, this mental_floss article will do it for you: 11 Songs Old Enough to Buy Booze.

My only saving grace is I was still in junior high.

Of course, this is my favorite, for reasons:



You really should take ten minutes out of your life and watch that, even if you think you remember it, because twenty-one years later it is gleeful in its horribleness.  There's Axl...being Axl.  There's Slash in a top hat and an open shirt and jeans with what appears to be built-in chaps, striding out of a church and playing guitar in the dust like it ain't no thang, cigarette hanging out of his mouth the whole time (in fact, damn near everyone in the video is smoking, which is the biggest out of time thing there).  There's the ridiculous orchestra, the ridiculous grand piano (which eventually Slash stands on to play 'cause he's Slash, and with a nom de guerre like that you have to do ridiculous shit to earn it), the backup singers with the ridiculous spiral perms and opera gloves up to their armpits.  There's the crazy trampy wedding dress and it's all so perfect in it's horribleness and I think I'm crying now.

Excuse me, I'm having a moment.

OK, not really.

I just love how over the top this was.  Nirvana's Nevermind came out that same year and grunge would thankfully slap the ridiculousness that is metal upside its head (sorry, honey, but the genre had its time and that time has passed and sane people are glad), but this song is its last gasp and it's so outrè that you kind of have to love it.  Or admire it at least.

We don't do bad music that well anymore.  I am tempted to say that bands these days take themselves too seriously, but I'm not sure that is it.  I somehow think everyone involved in that video thought it was high art. Maybe the opposite is true. No one takes themselves seriously enough.  There's too much meta-commentary in art;  you can't do anything without winking at the audience and inviting them in on the joke you just have to be making.

I blame Scream.