Black Friday CD sales: GNR fires blanks, Kanye cut in half

Billboard.Com reports that sales projections for the much-discussed Guns N' Roses return and Kanye West's cathartic release following the death of his mom and his split with his fiancee have not sold as well as expected. Kanye's 808s & Heartbreak is projected to sell in the 425,000-450,000 range, well below the 700,000-975,000 units predicted and less than half of what last year's more mainstream Graduation moved in its first week.

The bigger news is that first-week projections for GNR's Chinese Democracy could be in the 250,000-260,000 range, down from the expected 300,000-784,000 units which, itself, is hardly special given the media attention, GNR's previous sales and the reported $13 million price tag for this album. Not only that, but GNR were trumped in the U.K. by Las Vegas band, The Killers. The Killer's fourth release and third studio album, Day & Age, debuted at No. 1 to lock GNR out of the top spot overseas.

Reasons for GNR's disappointing sales will be the subject of debate. My view?

A: People probably aren't falling for this ruse. Chinese Democracy is an Axl Rose solo album. He's the only remaining member. It would be like Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger releasing their next solo albums as The Beatles and Rolling Stones, respectively. Axl writes, sings and produces, and solo he has his virtues, but he's not the whole band or its sound and GNR without guitarist, co-composer Slash and the muscular rhythm section is not the same thing. 250,000 or so for an Axl solo album is pretty good.

  B: 17 years is a long time to wait and be disappointed. Chinese Democracy is a good album musically, but it's not on par with Appetite for Destruction or the two Use Your Illusion sets and it's not even the best hard rock album this year. I'd rank AC/DC's Black Ice and Metallica's Death Magnetic above it for sheer get-in-your-car-and-crank-it enjoyment. And nothing on Chinese Democracy is as infectious as The Killers' single, Human.

C: Axl's mistreated fans for years by showing up late on stage, obsessively tinkering with this new music and delaying it. Those fans, probably teens in the late 80s, have grown up and moved on and have other concerns these days -- like the economy and feeding their families.

D: Maybe partnering with just Best Buy for physical CD sale and iTunes for download wasn't the best marketing plan. I'm no fan of Wal-Mart but that chain came through for AC/DC, Eagles and Journey exclusives in a big way -- even without an iTunes component. (On iTunes, as I write this, Chinese Democracy ranks No. 8, behind Britney Spears, Kanye West, Killers, the Twilight soundtrack and a couple others.)

E: The media cared about this album, the masses really don't.

Final figures will be released on Wednesday.

UPDATE: Official numbers are in and Kanye's 808s comes in at No. 1 with 450,000 (Graduation had 957,000 last year); Taylor Swift's Fearless rebounds to No. 2 (267,000) and GNR debuts No. 3 (261,000 which is a massive drop from GNR's last studio efforts, Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II, which debuted at Nos. 2 and 1 respectively, with 685,000 and 770,000 after being released on the same day in Sept. 1991.)

Comments

[can't fight this feeling anymore]

All good reasons, though to me the best one seems B. 17 years is more than enough time to become irrelevant, especially when your fans have grown up (or old) and moved on. We might still listen to our old time rock and roll but we're not quite as excited about it as we once were. And like you point out: I don't care how good the band is, if Slash isn't part of it, it's not GNR.