What were the 80 most important musical recordings, artists, trends, events, and performances of 2008? What were the eight things this year that broke our hearts—or, at least, our ears? We’re happy to announce 80 ‘08 (and Heartbreak), Idolator’s year-end overview. The list is below the jump. MORE »
Posts Tagged ‘chinese democracy’
80 '08 (And heartbreak)
Heartbreak No. 7: Axl Rose Finally Brings Democracy To China
I was never much of a Star Wars fan, so the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments that accompanied the forever-awaited release of The Phantom Menace passed by me at the time. But when I finally sat down with Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy—a long-awaited follow-up to a cultural moment that, for better or worse, defined my adolescence—I finally got what my Star Wars friends were all up in arms about, namely the casting of a newer, harsher, and daresay aged light on a once-cherished talisman. MORE »
Axl Rose: Taking Questions, Taking Names
Axl Rose’s foray into handling his own press continued on Sunday, when he dropped by the Guns N’ Roses fan site MyGNRForum.com to answer fans’ questions. The end result is half extended rant, half one-sided interview (he picked out questions from a list), with lots of talk about his tussels with Slash, how the real inspiration for “Sweet Child O’ Mine” was Lynyrd Skynyrd, and how a W. Axl Rose solo album would be “much more experimental and instrumental.” There’s a lot more, including some talk about the legal wrangling over the GNR name: MORE »
The highlight of today’s otherwise dull WSJ… MORE »
Axl Rose (Or Someone Who Hijacked His Password) Hits The Message Boards
Hey, Axl Rose sat down for an interview last night! Well, it wasn’t an interview as much as it was lots of posts on two Guns N’ Roses-related message boards—mygnrforum.com and Here Today, Gone To Hell—and who knows whether the poster was really Axl, or whether it was someone who just figured out that his password was d0lphin1 and who decided to have some fun, but either way, I’m sure Rolling Stone is fuming over not getting the exclusive. After the jump, a few highlights from Axl’s late-night posting spree, which, we learn, was transmitted via PC, although he sometimes uses a Mac as well. MORE »
the biz
Five Reasons Why Strip Clubs Won’t Save “Chinese Democracy”
So, last week’s 79% drop in sales (261,000 to 57,000) for Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy seems like kinda-bad news for Axl Rose, Best Buy, and anyone who was hoping that gobs of free press and a long-awaited record would add up to sales, no? Well, Bob Chiappardi, a marketing consultant who claims to be one of the few people who’s worked with GNR since the Live?! Like A Suicide days, thinks that the album’s best days are actually ahead of it! Chiappardi believes that Chinese Democracy is going to be a slow-burning hit like Kid Rock’s Rock N’ Roll Jesus, which overcame sorta-soft initial sales to move 2.5 million copies. Reason 1? He just serviced Chinese Democracy to strip clubs! But I’m not so sure about Axl’s long-awaited opus overcoming its Thanksgiving-turkey status anytime soon. MORE »
they write letters
Dr Pepper Continuing To Operate In “All Publicity Is Good Publicity” Mode
So, after all the advance hype which led to disappointing sales numbers which led to people pointing their fingers toward Axl Rose for not promoting Chinese Democracy at all, the blame game surrounding the long-delayed Guns N’ Roses album has finally focused in on… Dr Pepper! Yes, the soft-drink pushers, which offered the world a (coupon for a) free sample of its beverage in honor of Chinese Democracy’s release date, got into a bit of (uncarbonated) hot water when the Web site it created for the promotion crashed under the stress of all those people who weren’t buying Axl’s album trying to wring their free soda out of it. Axl’s lawyers whipped off a letter saying that the stunt was “a complete fiasco.” (I’d think that in the grand scheme of things, the decision to go with the clowns at Best Buy for the exclusive distribution of a piece of recorded music, and not, say, a flat-screen TV, was the biggest fiasco of all, but who asked me, right?) What does Dr Pepper have to say about it? MORE »
who charted
The Record Business Celebrates The Bad Kind Of Black Friday
If anyone in the music business was hoping that the one-two punch of a holiday weekend and big-name releases would magically convince people to pay for music one last time, they may want to pour themselves a stiff drink, or at least spike their morning latte: Billboard is reporting that the No. 1 album, Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak, sold 425,000-450,000 copies over the course of last week, while Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy woefully underperformed, moving between 250,000 and 260,000 copies during its first week on Best Buy’s shelves. And that’s not all: Depending on who you ask, overall music sales were down anywhere between 10% and 30% when compared with last year’s holiday weekend, although online numbers were OK. Meanwhile, a UK tabloid is claiming that bigwigs at Universal Music Group are blaming the soft landing of Chinese Democracy squarely on Axl, because he didn’t do enough press for the album. Even though it probably received more free press than any other record this year. Yeah, it couldn’t be that people currently see Guns N’ Roses as something of a novelty act, and that people who liked Appetite probably aren’t so into the new sound, and that even those people who wanted to give Axl a shot were a bit weirded out by the whole preserved-in-1999-amber feel of the final recorded product, could it? MORE »
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Is Best Buy Already Over Promoting “Chinese Democracy”?
While flipping through the Best Buy circular that came with this weekend’s New York Times, I noticed something kind of odd: There wasn’t one mention of Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy anywhere within, despite the album still being exclusively available at the big blue retailer. All the premium music-selling real estate—the album-cover shots in proffered iPods, etc.—was instead given over mostly to Britney Spears’ Circus, which I can understand on one level (a pretty girl being like a melody and all), but which doesn’t make sense given that the Guns deal was supposedly a big-money transaction for Best Buy, and that the endlessly speculated-about album reportedly didn’t break the half-million mark as far as its first-week sales went. MORE »
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Idolator Presents The Totally Not Made Up Tale Of “Chinese Democracy”
A.K.A the secret story of how you almost didn’t get to hear the new Guns N’ Roses album, after all. As told to Jess Harvell by Axl himself. (No, I swear.) MORE »
