This fingerstyle acoustic arrangement of Guns N' Roses' Welcome to the Jungle will bring you to your knees

Josephine Alexandra
(Image credit: Josephine Alexandra / YouTube)

Guns N' Roses' Welcome to the Jungle is one of the most iconic songs in rock history, and as such, has been covered by countless guitarists and online creators.

While many faithfully pay tribute to the rock 'n' roll classic, every once in a while, a musician comes along to give the track a drastic transformation. Take, for example, Indonesian guitarist Josephine Alexandra, who recently rearranged the entire song for fingerstyle guitar, playing almost every single part in one take.

Armed only with an exquisitely adorned Taylor PS12ce 12-fret acoustic amid a theme-appropriate jungle backdrop, Alexandra displays her formidable fingerstyle ability as she glides through the track, effortlessly overlaying the melody of Axl Rose's vocal lines on top.

Naturally, playing a fingerstyle version of Slash's solo – while also maintaining the multiple melodic layers underneath – would be a pretty tall order for any guitarist, even one of Alexandra's caliber. Instead, she delivers a massive-sounding, multi-faceted passage based on the original track's chord progression in this section.

And just in case you wanted to sing along – because let's face it, it's hard to hear Welcome to the Jungle and not belt it out – Alexandra has even included captions containing the song's lyrics at the bottom of the video.

Josephine Alexandra has built a considerable following of 1.74 million subscribers on her YouTube channel. Her other work includes fingerstyle acoustic covers of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit, Linkin Park's Waiting for the End, Green Day's American Idiot and more.

Her work recalls Marcin, the Polish percussive fingerstyle guitarist who has acoustically reimagined classics like Led Zeppelin's Kashmir and Metallica's Master of Puppets.

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Sam Roche

Sam was Staff Writer at GuitarWorld.com from 2019 to 2023, and also created content for Total Guitar, Guitarist and Guitar Player. He has well over 15 years of guitar playing under his belt, as well as a degree in Music Technology (Mixing and Mastering). He's a metalhead through and through, but has a thorough appreciation for all genres of music. In his spare time, Sam creates point-of-view guitar lesson videos on YouTube under the name Sightline Guitar.