What does Every Rose Has Its Thorn mean?

Poison: Every Rose Has Its Thorn Meaning

Album cover for Every Rose Has Its Thorn album cover

Song Released: 1988


Every Rose Has Its Thorn Lyrics

We both lie silently still
In the dead of the night
Although we both lie close together
We feel miles apart inside

Was it something I said or something I did
Did my words not come out right
Though I tried not to hurt you
Though I...

  1. 1TOP RATED

    #1 top rated interpretation:
    anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Jul 16th 2006 !⃝

    I think the meaning to this song is pretty obvious but you wouldn't believe the amount of people who just don't get it. So for those few I thought I'd take the song apart.

    *We both lie silently still
    In the dead of the night
    Although we both lie close together
    We feel miles apart inside*

    (Relationship has gone so downhill)

    *Was it something I said or something I did
    Did my words not come out right
    Though I tried not to hurt you
    Though I tried
    But I guess that's why they say*

    (Unsure of what happened)

    *Every rose has its thorn*
    (the rose being the relationship, the thorn being pain)
    *Just like every night has its dawn
    Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song*
    (Just saying that a cowboy and has song, and the night and dawn come together just like love and pain)
    *Every rose has its thorn*

    ect:

    Basicaly this song is about how you gotta take the good with the bad and that even a thing of beauty like a rose carries dangers and pain.

  2. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Aug 7th 2019 !⃝

    Its about that everything beautiful in life also has its catch. Like Catch 22. Not everything you see is what you think it is. Like for instance a rich person, you automatically assume that they will have this perfect life and that their life is free of pain and sorrows. It's basically talks about how everything that is good also has its bad. So basically what he is saying is that nothing in life is ever going to be perfect and how we want things to truly be. He talks about how every Cowboy sings a sad song, because a Cowboy like the songs meaning represents this bad ass who goes out and hunts, kills, and is typically carefree and wild , but yet still sings a sad song... Its a song all of us can relate because we have all experienced pain and loss.

  3. Asuno2002
    click a star to vote
    May 12th 2019 !⃝

    Well it’s
    Obvious love bites and in some situations
    Most woman are cold and insensitive
    To the sacrifice and the pain endured
    In our modern world because the all mighty __ssy has the power and yes
    We are a dime a dozen
    If you get a chance to feel this kinda
    Pain embrace it It’s called LOVE

  4. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Jul 8th 2015 !⃝

    As many of the people who commented before me have said, the meaning to this song is in many ways fairly obvious, and yet, in my opinion, some people still misunderstand it to a point. Some of these comments were targeting the writer and the specific events that triggered him to write this song. However, I think this song has a meaning so much deeper than that. Possibly deeper than he ever meant it to be. It's message resonates with everyone because everyones experienced that feeling that just radiates from this song. Everyones been in a situation that this song just embodies. The first verse is the writer talking specifically about himself. It is him talking about the broken relationship that he's in, and wondering if it is his fault. To me the entirety of that verse is like a question to himself, and then the answer is the chorus. The chorus seems like where he just accepts that maybe no one is really at fault, that maybe life is never just good or bad, its both: they go hand in hand. The rose symbolizing the beauty and the happiness that exists in everything, and the thorn symbolizing the darkness or pain that exists under that beauty. The following line then states that just like all good comes with some dark undertones, all bad[night] has to eventually end[dawn] He then continues to say that every cowboy, who are often viewed as wild carefree people, has a sad song, which is sort of just a rewording of the message that nothing is just good or bad, by conveying that even the happiest people have a sad, dark story from sometime in their life. The following verses once again address his own specific situation and while I love all of them to keep this short I''ll just pull what to me is the most powerful lyric. That line being:
    "Though it's been a while now
    I can still feel so much pain
    Like a knife that cuts you the wound heals
    but the scar, that scar remains"
    I love this line because it once again is relatable to everyone, because for most people whatever "sad song" they sing still hurts them somehow. And, though that pain may not be as bad as whenever it started it is still there, and like a scar it will never fade away, it may almost be forgotten but it will always be there. I also like that he then ties that into to his later line of how seeing her "cuts him like a knife" and to hear that he now means nothing to her "tears him up" Over all this song is just extremely sentimental, deep, and made all the more powerful by how relatable it is.

  5. robbin.hall.14
    click a star to vote
    Jul 31st 2014 !⃝

    when something is so beautiful its so hard to remember it can bring you pain/ just as the thorn on a rose so is a scorn woman

  6. anonymous
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    Jun 23rd 2014 !⃝

    I think it means that every one makes mistakes in life. Everyone does because we are all human beings and we all go through pain in life by losing ones we love by blaming it on ourselves.

    Basically Brett Michaels is blaming himself for what his girlfriend did even though he had nothing to do with it. And the mistake was his girlfriend took him for granted thinking he didn’t even love her

  7. anonymous
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    Mar 14th 2013 !⃝

    I am 11 yrs old an even I GET IT! Rose(Poison:his band,Fame,Fortune & other stuffs)Thorn(Tracy & The heart-break,the sorrow-It's a long story:But we've ALL(usually)Have had a boy or girl break our hearts some time or another!!! I mean,USE YOUR HEADS PEOPLE!!!! Sorry for that Bret,-anonymous!!!:D

  8. anonymous
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    Jun 25th 2012 !⃝

    No. The meaning is whatever you face in life that sucks, just keep going.

  9. anonymous
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    May 31st 2012 !⃝

    Her last name was Rose She got pregnant by someone that did not want to be a Father It pained her to know this. Then she was raped
    She left town to move west where Every Cowboy sang a sad song. She didn't know what to say then and doesn't have much to say a decade later. Pricked more then once.

  10. Randy Newman
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    Oct 25th 2011 !⃝

    this one is really not that hard. He was in a rose garden and simply noticed that, "Hey, that rose has a thorn, and so does that one. In fact 'Every Rose Has It's Thorn!!!!'"

  11. anonymous
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    May 30th 2011 !⃝

    She was 16 at the time they begun dating and was certainly NOT a stripper. Ok so now since that everyone has clarity on that.. Bret said that The Rose was his band and all of that was taking off (great thing) and the relationship ending and being interfered with losing that is The Thorn.
    Check out his E True Hollywood story for the quote and even an interview with her, Tracy Crosby. She claims to never have cheated but that their was cheating. He said all the temptations on the road was hard and so it goes.
    I know he was happy with her, they were with each other back then, So in love. You can even find early shots of them together in mags from 86-90(ish). She posed with Bret for some of the publicity shots etc that were, for two examples, in Metal Edge and Hit Parader.

  12. anonymous
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    Jan 10th 2008 !⃝

    Bret Michaels picked up a phone and heard his stripper girlfriend talking to some other guy. She was Cheating on Him. He then wrote this song in a laundromat. The title Simply means that everything good has something bad about it.

  13. anonymous
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    Aug 27th 2007 !⃝

    Everybody is an idiot. Bret said it himself it's about his girlfriend how cheated on him with a radio DJ.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
  14. anonymous
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    Aug 13th 2007 !⃝

    Michaels wrote this song about his relationship gone bad because of his life as a rock star--always on the road, the parties that accompany that lifestyle, etc.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
  15. YourFan
    click a star to vote
    Jul 19th 2007 !⃝

    I pretty much agree with the two people above me. All I have to add is that Bret Micheals wrote this song about his stripper girlfriend after finding out she has been cheating on him.

  16. anonymous
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    Apr 11th 2007 !⃝

    *I guess every rose has its thorn*
    meaning that someone can be beautiful on the inside or out and still like a thorn on the rose have lots of faults that can hurt people


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