“November Rain” by Guns N Roses

"November Rain" is the grand, rain-soaked centerpiece of Use Your Illusion I, the 1991 album from Guns N' Roses, and Geffen put it out as a single in February 1992. Axl Rose wrote it, and he's all over the recording: lead vocal, piano, keyboards and synthesizer, with Johann Langlie adding synth of his own.

This is the band's power ballad pushed as far as it will go, and then some. It runs almost nine minutes, swelling from a lonely piano into something enormous, with Duff McKagan's bass and Matt Sorum's drums holding steady while Slash and Izzy Stradlin wait their turn. When Slash's guitar finally takes the spotlight, it's pure melodrama, as big as a cathedral. The choir behind it counts Shannon Hoon, Dizzy Reed and Reba Shaw among its voices, and it sounds like a wedding and a funeral happening at once.

For a song that long, the charts treated it kindly: number three on the Billboard Hot 100, number one on the Cash Box Top 100 and number four in the UK. At the time it was the longest song ever to crack the Hot 100's top ten. Andy Morahan directed the video.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.