Songoftheday 7/30/16 - Shed a tear 'cause I'm missin' you I'm still alright to smile, girl I think about you every day now was a time when I wasn't sure...

"Patience" - Guns N' Roses
from the album GN'R Lies (1988)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #4 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 10

Today's song of the day comes from the Los Angeles hard rock band Guns N' Roses, whose first album Appetite For Destruction had been a huge success both critically and commercially, sending three singles into the top ten on the American pop chart: "Paradise City", "Welcome To The Jungle", and the #1 "Sweet Child O' Mine". In the interim between albums and their touring, the band released GN'R Lies, a record that combined an EP from 1986, Live ?!*@ Like A Suicide with acoustic tracks recorded more recently. One of those songs was the rough but gentle ballad "Patience". Written by lead singer Axl Rose and rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin, the plea from a lover to hang on was totally different from all we had heard from them before...

"Patience" became the band's fourth top-10 pop hit in June of 1989. The single also climbed to #7 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart. Internationally, the song reached the top ten in Ireland (#2), the Netherlands (#4), New Zealand (#4), and the United Kingdom (#10), went to #16 in Australia, and stopped at #38 in Germany (their first hit there).

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Here's the band performing the song live at the American Music Awards, with Don Henley filling in on drums for a rehabbing Steven Adler...

...and again on tour in 1992 (with Gilby Clarke on guitar now)...

Up tomorrow: A goth god and a metal queen go to eternal sleep.