Album · Guns N Roses
Use Your Illusion II by Guns N Roses
Use Your Illusion II is an album by Guns N Roses, released in 1991. 4 songs from it have charted on rock radio countdowns, with 160 countdown appearances in total. The biggest is “Knockin on Heaven's Door”, on 69 lists with a best position of #5.
Use Your Illusion II came out on Geffen on September 17, 1991, alongside its twin, Use Your Illusion I, and of the pair it was the one the public grabbed first: 770,000 copies in week one and a debut at number one on the Billboard 200. Mike Clink produced, and the band was in flux: Matt Sorum had taken over the drums from Steven Adler, who still turns up on "Civil War", keyboardist Dizzy Reed had signed on, and it would be the final Guns N' Roses studio record credited to Izzy Stradlin.
Axl Rose, Slash and Duff McKagan sprawl all over it with bruising hard rock, heavy metal thunder and ballad-sized drama, from "Knockin on Heaven's Door" to "Pretty Tied Up", while "You Could Be Mine" came in as the lead single swinging. It's excessive, bloated in spots and gloriously unapologetic about it. Together with its twin, it was the band's last batch of new originals until Chinese Democracy in 2008.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs from Use Your Illusion II on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Knockin on Heaven's Door#424 of all time | 69 | #5 | – | 1990–2026 | |
| 2 | Civil War | 51 | #25 | – | 1990–2026 | |
| 3 | You Could Be Mine | 36 | #78 | – | 1991–2026 | |
| 4 | Pretty Tied Up | 3 | #242 | – | 2002–2024 |
Only songs that appear on at least one countdown are listed. Release data from MusicBrainz.