Guns N’ Roses are in the news lately, and not always for the best reasons. An Australian music website MaxTV has now uncovered a song by an obscure (to me) Australian band, and its similarities with one of Guns N’ Roses’ most famous hits are simply striking!
How did they found out? It’s always in the comments apparently! A reader named Jimmy Gray made them notice about the resemblance between Australian Crawl’s ’Unpublished Critics’ and ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’, after an article talking about a possible Guns N’ Roses reunion. The Australian Crawl’s song is from 1981 and Guns N’ Roses’ hit from 1987, so this could perfectly fit with the plagiarism theory.
In general, it’s not a good sign when you can sing the lyrics of one song while listening to the other one, but this is what I did while listening to that Australian Crawl’s song and it works very well. They even have the same soaring chorus, just replace the oooooos by some aaaaaahs,… Guns N’ Roses just spiced things up a bit, they put more steroid in the music, add more of Slash’s guitar lead, more drumming and Axl Rose’s more in-your-face vocals. But beside this, the two songs are very similar.
When it comes to songs and plagiarism, it is always very difficult to decide, and you have to wonder why we didn’t hear about this before? These songs are almost 30 years old and nobody said anything till now? According to Consequence of Sound, ’Unpublished Critics’ appears on Australian Crawl’s album ‘Sirocco’ which peaked at no.1 on the charts at the time, so it could not have got totally unnoticed, unless people had already forgotten about it, since it was released 6 years before the Guns N’ Roses’ song.
After all these plagiarism stories lately, we have to wonder, are they gonna sue? Interestingly, the Daily Mail is reporting that Australian crawl member James Reyne, who co-wrote the song, just commented on the story:
‘It is not inconceivable that there are similarities between the two songs. It’s also not inconceivable that there may be vaguely legs in something,’ he explained.
‘It’s also not inconceivable that when they came out they were quite open in interviews that they liked a lot of Australian bands.’
‘I’m not about to take on the might of the Guns N’ Roses lawyers,’ he added, confirming that a lawsuit was not in his plan,
Reyne also said he didn’t ‘pay that much attention’ to the Guns N’ Roses song when it was released, as he was ‘probably more interested in their drug habits’… he is a cool guy. Australian Crawl disbanded in 1986, which could explain why they didn’t pay attention, but after this aggressive lawsuit between the Marvin Gaye estate and Pharrell Williams, this kind of attitude is very refreshing.
Listen to both songs below: