“Chinese Democracy” Gets Chopped And Screwed

ARTIST: Guns N’ Roses TITLE: “This I Love,” “Street Of Dreams,” “Sorry,” “Scraped,” “Catcher In The Rye” WEB DEBUT: Oct. 30, 2008

ONE-LISTEN VERDICT: “[The YouTube leaks of five tracks on Chinese Democracy] are in very bad quality. extremely choppy–it will test your patience,” the tipster who sent me the link to them this morning wrote. “Have fun!” he appended. If “fun” means “listening to these new songs as quickly as possible so as to let you know they’re out there while my dog is barking because of all the distortion laden over the songs,” then, well, fun is what I’m having! A few sketches based on what I was able to hear under the distortion:

“This I Love”: Our tipster referred to this as “Sedona Phantom Of The Opera, and I can’t disagree with that assessment at all.

“Street Of Dreams”: Those of you who snagged the leaks in June may remember this as “The Blues.” Kind of hard to tell if there are a lot of differences, because of the pop and hiss (and my dog barking).

“Sorry”: Pretty sure this leaked back in June as well; the “I’m sorry for you, not sorry for me” lyric sounds familiar. It’s a big, sweeping j’accuse with Axl’s voice veering between yowl and growl.

“Scraped”: The one slightly upbeat track.

“Catcher In The Rye”: “Yesterdays Pt. 2: Todays.”

WHERE TO FIND THEM: Well, they were on YouTube like 20 minutes ago, but now they’re gone. Think of it this way: At least you won’t have to deal with all that popping now! Seriously, it was starting to make the veins in my head throb.