Slash revealed that if the internet had existed when "One In A Million" was released, Guns N' Roses would have been canceled, since the song has lyrics considered homophobic and racist.
In an interview with Yahoo! Entertainment , the guitarist said: “I haven’t thought about it much recently, to be honest. But now that you mention it, a lot of what Guns N’ Roses did in the past would get us canceled today. We certainly wouldn’t be well-regarded, and I mean that on many levels. But a lot of things from that time wouldn’t be considered acceptable today. I’m glad there was no internet back then! It would have been a completely different world. But anyway, I don’t dwell on it. It simply is what it is.”
The controversial track was written entirely by Axl Rose and is part of the album G N' R Lies (1988), the band's second album. The other members even tried to convince him to remove it from the album, but they were unsuccessful. The vocalist then even joked about the song, writing a fake headline about such criticism and placing it on the back cover of the project.
After "One In A Million" was heavily criticized by the public, Axl defended himself by saying not only that the song was misinterpreted but also that he was a fan of several gay artists. The musician later acknowledged the derogatory lyrics in the track.
In 2018, Guns N' Roses re-released the box set Appetite For Destruction (2018), which includes material from G N' R Lies , but without "One In A Million". "We collectively decided that there was no place for it in the box set. It didn't take long. There wasn't a big roundtable discussion about it," commented Slash.
Listen to “One In A Million” below:
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