Hear Guns N Roses' Sweet Child O Mine Covered As A 1920s-Era New Orleans Jazz Number

The main problem with Guns N Roses over the last two decades is that Axl is a douche, and they do nothing relevant. For a band with a frontman who is still, despite his asshole tendencies, one of the best rock vocalists in history, it’s sad that they can’t even maintain the tenuous relevance of a band like Kiss. The only thing left to do is take some of rock’s greatest songs, by one of the greatest bands, and make it new again. That’s exactly what Scott Bradlee has done with this 1920’s New Orleans jazz revamp of “Sweet Child O’ Mine.”

Sung with bluesy bravado by Miche Braden, and a retooling of Slash’s signature solo style as a horn section breakdown, this is the best version of this song. Better than Sheryl Crow’s acoustic version, which I’ve always preferred over the original. I will say that lyrically the song sticks out as being decidedly not from the 1920’s. In fact, I would have sort of preferred perhaps a few changes of phrase to reflect the times. If you can do it with the music in a revamp, why not the lyrics?

Still, it’s a brilliant retooling of the song. Postmodern Jukebox, Bradlee’s project to revamp modern classics into old timey blues/jazz/bluegrass/etc style songs, can be found on his Youtube channel or iTunes. Speaking of brilliant, do you not like Miley Cyrus’ newest album? How about a Doo Wop version of “We Can’t Stop?”

Steve West

Staff Writer at CinemaBlend.