“Patience” by Guns N Roses

"Patience" is the ballad that caught everybody off guard on G N' R Lies, the 1988 record from Guns N' Roses, and it went on to be a single in 1989. No sirens, no screaming leads: just three acoustic guitars, Axl Rose singing low and tender, and a slow, swaying groove that feels like a late-night apology.

Mike Clink produced, engineered and mixed it, cutting the track in a single session. Slash and Izzy Stradlin handle the acoustics, Duff McKagan plays bass and sings harmony with Stradlin, and McKagan has credited Rose with dreaming up the song's story and melody out of thin air. The band that sounded like a street fight on record proved it could whisper too, and it climbed to number four on the Billboard Hot 100.

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