The Los Angeles-based hard-rock band Guns N' Roses released use Your Illusion albums (I and lI) at the height of their fame. Their lesser known but no less monstrous song Coma, from album 1, has no chorus, is more than 10 minutes long and is in five distinct parts. It provides interesting insight about its writers, Axl Rose (lead vocalist) and Slash (lead guitarist), who struggled with mental illness and drug and alcohol misuse. The song begins with four regular heartbeats before the bass, drums and guitars join following the heart rhythm; Throughout the; song more heartbeats and beeps of an ECG machine are heard. The initial lyrics include. 'Kinda like it in a coma' and on two occasions a man yells'get the crash cart!'Four minutes into the song Axl sings more blissfully; but then the drums beat rapidly, perhaps indicating ventricular tachycardia as the defibrillator is applied for the second time. Subsequent to again being 'zapped' the song becomes more melodramatic before turning sinister. A woman's voice is heard talkihg to Axl, in the second person, mainly with a derogatory content, in the final part there is a dreaded sense of destiny with lyrics that include 'gotta one way ticket to your suicide'.
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