"Every Rose Has Its Thorn" is the title of a power ballad song by American glam metal band Poison. It was released in October 1988 as the third single from Poison's second album Open Up and Say... Ahh!. It is the band's only number-one hit in the U.S., reaching the top spot on December 18, 1988, for three weeks (carrying over into 1989) and it also charted at #11 on the Mainstream Rock chart. It was a number 13 hit in the UK. "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" was named number 34 on VH1's "100 Greatest Songs of the 80s", #100 on their "100 Greatest Love Songs" and #7 on MTV and VH1 "Top 25 Power Ballads".

Musically, the song starts quietly and features two guitar solos, one mellow and one fast. During the same period, Poison had been playing at a cowboy bar called "The Ritz" in Dallas, Texas, accounting for the song's recognizable references to cowboys in the chorus, along with the twang in Bret Michaels' vocals, which give the song a country feel not often heard in power ballads composed by glam metal bands.

In an interview with VH1's Behind the Music, Michaels said the inspiration for the song came from a night when he was in a laundromat waiting for his clothes to dry, and called his girlfriend on a pay phone. Michaels said he heard a male voice in the background and was devastated; he said he went into the laundromat and wrote "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" as a result. Following their gig in Dallas, Michaels and bandmates CC DeVille (guitar), Bobby Dall (bass) and Rikki Rockett (drums) retreated to a seedy motel for the evening. It was there that an exhausted and lonesome Michaels determined that a 3am call to the girlfriend – an exotic dancer, natch – with whom he shared an apartment in Hollywood would be just the thing to lift his spirits.

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