Poison lead singer Bret Michaels wrote "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" in response to a failed love affair with his girlfriend, Tracy Lewis. After playing at a bar in Dallas, Texas, Michaels called Lewis at her Los Angeles apartment and heard a man's voice in the background. The next day, the disconsolate Michaels took his acoustic guitar with him to a Laundromat and wrote the song right there. He explained in Rolling Stone June 10, 2010: "I remember using a pay phone to call this girl I was dating. We were on the road, touring in our Winnebago, and my relationship was falling apart. I still have the yellow legal pad I wrote it on. There are, like, a bazillion verses that I later edited down."
The late '80s was the golden age of power ballads, with rock bands showing their softer side in these very emotional songs. "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" exemplifies this era and is an example of a ballad that became the band's biggest hit - it was #1 for the last two weeks in 1988 and also for the first week of 1989. Other examples are "Don't Close Your Eyes" by Kix and "The Flame" by Cheap Trick - a song they hated, by the way. At this time, Poison was known for party tunes like "Talk Dirty To Me" and "Nothin' But a Good Time." "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" was a little prickly for fans who expected more of the same, but it added nuance to their catalog and put them in the conversation of top hair metal bands of the era, along with the likes of Mötley Crüe and Guns N' Roses.
On a VH1 Behind The Music special, Michaels explained the metaphoric meaning behind the rose and thorn in this song. He said that the rose was his career taking off, and the thorn was the fact that it was costing him his relationship with his girlfriend Tracy.
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