What songs will go down as classics?

[damianw]

Street Of Dreams, If The World, TWAT, Catcher N The Rye, Sorry, This Is Love, Prostitute all instant classics in my mind.  It's funny coz the two songs that i really enjoyed early were Better & IRS, while i still think they are great songs i don't know if they are classics.   

[markmw]

my list:
Street of Dreams
Chinese Democracy (hell, it's peaked at #5 on mainstream rock)
Shackler's Revenge
Better
Scraped
There Was a Time

[hamdanz]

Honestly I don't see all the fuss over TIL.  I find it quite boring.

I think There was a time, Prostitute, Better, Street of dreams, Catcher in the Rye, Shacklers revenge and Sorry

[collapsing]

First off, I wouldn't call Chinese Democracy a classic in the classic sense (sorry to confuse) as it simply has too many naff tracks on it which already sound years out of date and it's only just been released. However, it's undoubtably one of the most infamous records of all time and therefore could be regarded as classic in a sense of its own.

However, back to the real question.

This I Love I would personally state as a classic in my mind. It's one I will enjoy and come back to time and again. As some one else has pointed out, it sounds like it could be part three of a trilogy along with November Rain and Estranged. The orchestration is great, the piano haunting, Axl's voice has emotion by the gut-load and makes use of his trademark slides of pitch. The lyrics are strong, clearly heartfelt and never fail to impact through all the verses and choruses. The song is superbly constructed with the solo perfectly placed and, thanks to its wonderful restraint, it manages to faithfully carry the emotion of the song over the song's middle ground without losing any feeling along the way. Finally, it's looking like the stand out favourite amongst fans, which always helps.

Sorry is a really nice track and has a great set of lyrics. Whether it should be regarded as a classic, of course, comes down to how you define a classic. A classic Guns n' Roses track, I think it deserves to be. I can't see it becoming a classic track in the public sense so easily as it's not the kind of track I'd expect to see on too many rock compilation CDs.

There Was a Time perhaps stands a greater chance than Sorry of being regarded as a classic, in the public sense, as it has an epic feel to it similar to This I Love and makes up for a relatively weak chorus with a superb latter half/third of the song which puts it in a similar category to songs such as Stairway to Heaven and November Rain.

However, for a song off Chinese Democracy to be regarded as a true classic in the public sense, it really needs to be given a single release with an accompanying video.

[Theodora]

Better - Sorry - TWAT

[MetaSouL]

Come on guys, we're stretching it just a little bit don't you think?  A "classic" in the sense intended in this thread is different than a "favorite" song in your own mind.  One involves mass appeal across generations of people, musical genres and time, whereas the other involves your lonely opinion.

There are many really good songs that don't become classics, that don't make the jump from one generation to the next and retain the same popularity 20 years after the fact.

Using UYI as an example, a couple of really good songs that weren't able to make this leap are Estranged and You Could Be Mine (although I would argue Estranged SHOULD have been a classic and it's unfortunate that it is not).  They gained a good deal of mass appeal, but are they household song names that kids and grandparents have both grown to know and love?  Outside of exceptions, are they really ever seriously compared to Stairway to Heaven, Simple Man or Comfortably Numb as a few examples, let alone the plethora of greats?   

That's not a bad thing at all, as most bands don't even have one song that is considered a classic, but my point is, to proclaim Riad, Scraped, and some others named in this thread, as future classics is stretching it just a wee bit. 

Let's trim the tree back a little closer to reality here.

I may be off as well, but I'm going with This I Love (and maybe Street of Dreams) followed by Better as the only true-blue classic contenders off of Chinese Democracy.  The only one I would bet money on is This I Love.

Now classics "in my own mind" is a different thing altogether, and this is where I too would call out ¾ of the album as "classic". 

~M

[Treeza]

Madagascar, Sorry,Shackler's Revenge for me but love 'em all, album fuckin ROCKS!!!