Guns n` Roses `Chinese Democracy` only managed to entice 20790 fans into stores in Australia last week and that wasn`t enough to topple stalwarts Pink and Kings of Leon.
Even if we give G n’ R a break and add in the figures sold before embargo (3,454), the tally for ‘Chinese Democracy’ is still less than last week’s sales for ‘Funhouse’ (27184) or ‘Only By The Night’ (24579).The simple message here is Axl Rose waited way too long to release the epic ‘Chinese Democracy’ album and in doing so, many of the old G n’ R fans simply switched off.
By Gunners standards, ‘Chinese Democracy’ is not a great album, but in all fairness to Guns n’ Roses, this is as much a Guns n’ Roses album as Mick Jagger’s ‘She’s The Boss’ was a Rolling Stones album.
Face it; ‘Chinese Democracy’ is GnR lite.
You’ve all heard the album by now. Yes it has three great songs (Chinese Democracy, Madagascar and IRS). It is also no coincidence that the three best songs on the album are the three oldest songs as well. Those tracks have been given a serious amount of road testing whenever Axl performed over the last 8 years.
In the UK, ‘Chinese Democracy’ debuted at number 2 behind The Killers ‘Day & Age’.
By waiting way too long, over producing an album that would have sounded pretty much the same had it been released 8 years ago, by promising numerous false starts to fans and constantly letting them down and by saying the album is by a band that no longer exists was all too much for the fans Axl.
They got bored waiting and moved on.
