Songoftheday 1/17/18 - I know how you feel inside I've I've been there before, somethin's changin' inside you and don't you know...

"Don't Cry" - Guns N' Roses
from the albums Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II (1991)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #10 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 17

Today's song of the day comes from the hard rock band Guns N' Roses, who had previewed their upcoming double album Use Your Illusion I & II, which was unusually released as separate units, with their contribution to the movie Terminator 2, with the tour de force rocker "You Could Be Mine", which reached the top-40 in the summer of 1991. The second single released (and the one out when the albums were out) is the power-ballad "Don't Cry", which appears in different versions (but the same music) on each of the albums. Written by lead singer Axl Rose and rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin, the song was their most "serious" single released to date, and was much better received on pop radio. Shannon Hoon, who in time would have his own success with "No Rain" with Blind Melon, sings backup, and appears in the video, which partly was drawn from an incident between Axl and ex-girlfriend Erin Everly (the woman from "Sweet Child O'Mine")...

"Don't Cry" returned the band to the top ten on the pop chart in America for the fifth time in November of 1991. The song also spent two weeks at #3 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart. Internationally, the single topped the Irish singles chart for two weeks, and reached the top ten in New Zealand (#2), Norway (#2), Switzerland (#3), Australia (#5), Austria (#5), the Netherlands (#7), the UK (#8), Sweden (#9), Spain (#10), and Belgium (#10).

Despite the success of the single, it wasn't quite paradise for the group, for as foretold by the "Where's Izzy?" sign in the music video, Stradlin left Guns N' Roses that November just as the song was peaking on the pop chart, after feuds with Rose and the rest of the band after cleaning up his own act. He would be replaced by Gilby Clarke for the rest of the massive tour they were on.

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Here's the alternate version of the song from Use Your Illusion II...