11 Worst Grammy Snubs of All Time
By April Jones
Guns N’ Roses
LA-based Guns n’ Roses burst onto the hard rock scene in the late 1980s with their debut studio album Appetite for Destruction. To this day, it’s still one of the top-selling albums of all time, selling over 30 million copies. It’s been included in “best album” lists curated by publications such as Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and Spin. But it never won a Grammy award. It wasn’t even nominated, not a single track nor the entire album. U2’s The Joshua Tree took home the award for Best Rock Performance that year. The category of Best Hard Rock Performance wasn’t created until 1990, but had it existed in 1988, Guns N’ Roses coulda been a contender.
The band’s second album, G N’ R Lies, did receive a nomination for Best Hard Rock Performance in 1990. Two years later, the band was nominated in that same category for Use Your Illusion I. Their final nomination came in 1993 for the single “Live and Let Die,” but they had some tough competition that year — Alice in Chains, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Faith No More. RHCP ultimately won the award.
Unfortunately, Guns N’ Roses’ Grammy days are far behind them. It took ten years for the band to finally release the long-awaited Chinese Democracy. By the time it was released in 2008, original members Slash and Duff McKagan had left the band and there had been numerous other lineup changes. The band was a mess, the album was a disaster. Chinese Democracy remains one of the most expensive rock albums ever made.