Well, the results are in. Guns n' Roses vs. AC/DC.
AC/DC. In a LANDSLIDE.
What can I say? I thought people would be curious about this G'n'R record. I was wrong. So were a majority of the voters on this site! Hell, 10 people said G'n'R would outsell AC/DC to the 4 who voted for AC/DC to come out on top.
The numbers? Well, that graphic tells it all on the top 40 albums list. "Chinese Democracy" sold an anemic 261,191 copies in its first week. Taylor Swift (whoever that is) sold more copies of his or her album "Fearless" in its THIRD WEEK than Chinese Democracy sold in its opening week.
Specifically to the bet... AC/DC sold THREE TIMES MORE copies of "Black Ice" (800,000+) than "Chinese Democracy" (260,000).
OUCH!
The cool thing about this? People voting with their dollar. People are sick of Axl Rose and his antics? Then don't buy his album. And they didn't. Happy with AC/DC and how they've stayed true to their sound and their fans? Then buy their album. And people did.
(I'm not going to make any argument about people illegally downloading these albums, or listening to it for free on MySpace, or anything. Money talks, bullshit walks.)
So, what did Adrianne win, and what did I lose? Well, I lost some dignity (I like to pretend I'm some music maven, but apparently I don't know jack) and Adrianne wins the luxury of me dumping the smelliest, grossest trashcan in the house -- the upstairs bathroom trash -- for a full month. So whenever she sees it getting past half-full, she can play the "Black Ice" card and my "Chinese Democracy" stupid ass will be hauling that can out to the trash. In the snow. At night time.
Thanks, Axl.
Adrianne would like to thank the three people who supported her and voted in favor of AC/DC. In fact, she asked that I name them on the blog and recognize them for their courage, their wisdom, their savvy.
But the truth is, the voting is anonymous. I know not who voted for AC/DC and who voted for G'n'R. (Well, I do know that Travis voted for AC/DC, while I know Marlan voted for G'n'R. Adding even more fuel to their rivalry. Congrats, Trav!)
This debate -- which has been lively and fun -- reminds me of http://www.fantasymoguls.com/. It's like fantasy football, but instead of buying football players, you buy movies, and the box office receipts are what decides the winners and losers. It's very simple, yet very fun. If you'd like to join our league (which both Trav and Mar are members of), email me and I'll get you involved.
And so ends the AC/DC vs. G'n'R debate. Now, if you'll excuse me... I have to take out the trash.
To those about to rock... WE SALUTE YOU.
5 comments:
So ever since you started this debate I've been analyzing it and came to the conclusion that ACDC would win, there were several factors that I don't think you thought of.
First, ACDC had an exclusive with Walmart, while GnR was with Best Buy. During these hard economic times people don't stop going to Walmart, they do stop going to Best Buy. So this allowed the casual fan to still get their ACDC because they were at Walmart anyway, but not GnR, because they would have to make a special trip, and a casual fan isn't probably going to do that. Now the hard core fan is going to get the album no mater what. Plus add in the fact that Walmart is everywhere and Best Buy is not. Again, more stores.
Next look at their target demographic, these are probably not big itunes and amazon.com ordering people (read into that what you want). They are the ones who still want to go to a store and buy it, again not easy since Best Buy isn't in every town.
The Walmart in Hays (and I have to believe everywhere) launched a massive ACDC line of clothing, put a rock band in the middle of the men's clothing and had the Rock Band ACDC disc loaded up, all this drawing attention to the release. Now I didn't go into a Best Buy around this release of GnR, but I doubt they had a whole section of their store dedicated to this. I assume you would have found a nice stand near the front, but not an entire section. Of course I could be wrong.
One of the last factors that helped ACDC is they are in the middle of a tour. This helps two ways, one for someone like me who is going to attend the January concert in KC, it makes me want to buy their newest record (even though I haven't) to hear what their new songs are before hearing them live, so they aren’t lost at the concert. The other way the tour helps is that it could have turned people on to it. The tour started before the album release (I believe) and thus people heard the songs and could have ran out and bought it when it came available.
So at the end of the day, GnR was due to fail. In some way Chinese Democracy = Snakes on a Plane, maybe?
Yo Adrianne, we did it!! I don't have some psychic preminition, I just voted with my gut (plus, I wanted to be able to rub it in Mar's face when his band lost). But in terms of hierarchy in the rock god pantheon, AC/DC is like Apollo to GnR's stupid mechanical bird in Clash of the Titans.
I voted for AC/DC; without analyzing the data as thoroughly as Eddie, I came to the same basic conclusions. Also take into account the simple fact that AC/DC has NOT been absent from our collective minds for 15 years, even though their production hasn't been top notch. I bought Black Ice because I happened to be in WalMart one evening. I wouldn't have made a special trip for it, but I consciously sought it out when I was in the store. I "acquired" Chinese Democracy one night because I happened across it. Quite frankly, it stinks and I would never pay money to see Axl and whoever he's dragging around with him on a tour, but I would certainly pay money to see AC/DC again, new songs or old, because I can count on Brian Johnson NOT walking off the stage in a snit and they always put on one hell of a show. Period. Chinese Democracy sounds like a fairly decent G'n'R cover band, but it doesn't sound like G'n'R. Period.
I didn't vote, but meant to for (of course) AC/DC. Please come take out OUR upstairs trash, it's full of poopy diapers.
I actually don't think I voted, anonymous or otherwise.
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