July 23, 2012 – This week, Guns N' Roses' landmark debut, Appetite for Destruction turns 25, which means Slash's top hat alone is older than Emma Stone. There's not much left to be said about how Appetite helped heavy metal emerge from an Aqua-Net fog, helped a generation of rock bands curse more and shower less, and even gave Kurt Cobain a worthy adversary. But they definitely spawned a lot of garbage too, from Buckcherry's career on down to Slash crewing with Fergie Ferg. To celebrate the inglorious history of a notorius album, here's SPIN's playlist of the worst covers of Appetite's 12 tracks. It's so fuckin' easy. Big Daddy - "Welcome to the Jungle" From Cutting Their Own Groove (1992) The eternal teenagers behind the Dr.

October 13, 2004 – BjörkMedullaElektra She comes from the land of ice and snow, to subjugate us once more withher whimsical grandeur-just like those kittens on the Internet singingLed Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song." But avant-cuteness has always beenjust the tip of Björk's iceberg. At first, her sixth studio album seemslike an electro-dork's take on MTV's old "Unplugged" gambit. With justoccasional swathes of synthesizer to keep it decent, her bare voicewantonly intermingles with tracks created entirely out of noises madeby humans: vocal ensembles Icelandic and British, human beat-boxes,Inuit throat singers, gentle art-rock vet Robert Wyatt, and hard-rocktrickster Mike Patton-plus, chorus upon chorus of Björks, multi-trackedinto infinity. Sure, it's high-concept:Björkapella. But it's no mere gimmick.

August 31, 2004 – Steve EarleThe Revolution Starts?NowArtemis If Steve Earle could sing like Toby Keith, he'd be knocking'em dead at the Kerry inaugural next January. Hell, if Earle couldmuster even a sliver of Keith's well-groomed stolidity, he might beable to save a song like the klutzy, would-be-anthemic title track ofhis 12th studio album, an otherwise canny survey of life duringwartime. Though he may be a man of the people, Earle's never been theman for them--mainstream country fans would've eventually tunedout his pack-a-day rasp even if he hadn't deserted them first, almost20 years back. Yet Earle's demagogic weakness is his artisticstrength: His characters feel like individuals, not archetypes. Twoyears back, on "John Walker's Blues," he burrowed so deeply into thepsyche of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, the 21st century's mostnotorious U.S.