Welcome to the Jungle

"Welcome to the Jungle" is a song by the American rock band Guns N' Roses that opens their debut album, Appetite for Destruction (1987). It came out as the album’s second single, first in the UK in September 1987, then again in October 1988 for the US, where it hit number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 24 on the UK Singles Chart.

Axl Rose wrote the lyrics while visiting a friend in Seattle, describing the city as big but still small compared to Los Angeles, and noting that anyone coming to town could find whatever they wanted. Guitarist Izzy Stradlin said the song is about Hollywood streets and is true to life. The music came together when Rose remembered a riff Slash had played while living in Slash’s mother’s basement. The band quickly built the song around it, with Slash calling it the first real collaboration among them, capturing a natural feel from their jam sessions between 1985 and 1986.

The breakdown was based on "The Fake," a song Duff McKagan wrote in 1978 for his punk band the Vains—the first song he ever wrote, later released as a single by that band. Slash said the song was written in about three hours. Rose claimed the lyrics were inspired by a homeless man in New York who yelled at him and a friend, "You know where you are? You're in the jungle baby; you're gonna die!" Slash noted that anyone who lived in Los Angeles could relate to that stark honesty.

The song has been widely praised. VH1 named it the greatest hard rock song of all time in 2009. In 2015, Sleazegrinder of Louder ranked it second on his list of "The 20 Greatest Hair Metal Anthems of All Time." Rolling Stone placed it at number 491 on its "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list in 2021, after earlier rankings of 467 in 2004 and 473 in 2010. Rolling Stone readers also voted it the greatest sports anthem in 2009. Martin Popoff’s book The Top 500 Heavy Metal Songs of All Time put it at number 19, and VH1 named it the second greatest metal song in 2008. The channel also ranked it number 26 on its "100 Greatest Songs of the 80s" in 2006. Paste and Kerrang both called it Guns N' Roses' greatest song, and a 2006 Blender poll named it the greatest song about Los Angeles.