downzy

Yes, but you could argue that those were all done with some artistic integrity. They weren't changing trends so much as doing what they wanted because that's what felt right. And when they did a lot of that stuff, it also garnered them a lot of fans because a lot of people connected to the material and their efforts. Can the same be said about incorporating stale AI visuals that have been overdone by many others? Is it a good sign when the creative team publicly announces that they were going one direction until the band management intervened? To each their own. But this video feels less like pushing boundaries and more about taking the easiest path forward while also following trends. True. Ultimately the only thing that matters is whether the band is happy and proud of their work. They're really only responsible to themselves with respect to achieving whatever feels right to them from a creative perspective. But if their sense of being creative involves using trendy visuals that feel lazy to anyone familiar with what's going on in this medium, then it's also not wrong for myself and others to state why we feel this way. I've always felt an artist's first (and really only) obligation is to themselves. But there's no obligation for anyone else to like it. Releasing any piece of art out there involves the risk of criticism or rejection. And I think that's what we're seeing with this video for most people who watch it. It just doesn't make sense to them for many of the reasons stated. Like I said, I don't hate it. There are elements that I like. Overall, it just doesn't work for me due to the AI visuals, which are a bit cringy at this point.

Agreed. Some effort was made here. But is that baseline now? Fairly certain most of us love Guns N' Roses because they put out great work. I guess we should give points for them trying, but how many? As fans, we're in this weird place where because the band didn't do much (at least, from our vantage point), it's assumed to be better than nothing when something is offered. But does that mean fans can't criticize if the work doesn't measure up to what fans want and expect from their favourite band? I'm all for encouragement and giving credit where it's due. If the band is happy with this video, then great. Ultimately their biggest priority should be pleasing themselves. But that doesn't mean their fans should like it.

If there's any value to come out of this video, it hopefully serves as a warning to other artists not to rely on A.I. to make music videos (unless the technology improves dramatically).

If I'm being honest, what I dislike the most is YouTube auto-playing Duff's video for Longfeather right after the video for The General. Say what you want about The General, but man alive Longfeather is truly terrible.

It's interesting to imagine how CD would have been received had it been given a proper launch. Release Better as the first single then follow it up with This I Love. Videos for both. There Was A Time should have been the third single.

This quote got my attention: "The decision to integrate AI into our storytelling process was inspired ultimately by the band management. Prior to combining the AI workflow, the team had been working on an animated cinematic in Unreal Engine. Incorporating this new AI workflow significantly impacted the project's direction and the unique visual style resulting from this blend aligns perfectly with the song's vibe. This showcases how using these new tools leads to successful collaborations between traditional and AI-driven art forms." Sounds like this might have been both a budget and aesthetic consideration. Would have been more interesting, in my opinion, had they stuck with the Unreal Engine renderings. But to each their own.

Don't hate it, despite being a CGI-AI seizure inducing slap to the face. Would have preferred at it just been live shots and they limited the AI edits to the performers. I really don't know what the cartoon is about or how it relates to the song.

Going to lock this thread and start a new thread for discussing the music video:

It was announced a week or two ago that Paradise City had passed 1 billion streams on Spotify. It got me wondering how GNR stacks up to other rock bands in the streaming era. Looked into the numbers and thought I'd share for those interested (FYI, only considered were streams from Spotify; I did not consider Apple Music, iTunes, Deezers, or Tidal). Currently, Guns songs have been played/streamed over 8.8 billion times. GNR has three songs that have over 1 billions streams (SCOM with 1.7 billion, WTTJ with almost 1.1 billion, and PC with 1 billion). November Rain will likely join the 1 billion club at some point later this year. To put things in perspective, SCOM has been streamed more times than all of Nine Inch Nails’ catalogue combined. Also applies to Stone Temple Pilots and Soundgarden. Comparing this achievement with other classic rock artists (I don't include bands like Coldplay or Imagine Dragons, who benefit from being more current and more pop/less rock) there aren't that many. Queen leads the pack with five; AC/DC and RHCP have four each. (RHCP surprised me). Metallica, Nirvana, Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, and Bon Jovi have two songs with at least one billion streams. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Radiohead, Lincoln Park, The Eagles, Foo Fighters, Journey (wild guess what song that is) and Aerosmith each have one song with a billion streams. U2 doesn't have any (though With or Without You is close with 971 million); nor does Pink Floyd. ------------------------------------- Streaming performance on the last four singles GNR has released: Hard Skool - 18.9 million streams (more than Locomotive and There Was A Time). Absurd - 7.3 million Perhaps - 6.8 million The General - 1.8 million While The General has only been available on Spotify for less than two months, I don't see it catching any of GNR's previous singles as it's average 10k streams a day right now. A video might change that (which maybe why they're releasing one at this point). But Perhaps is currenlty averaging 16k streams a day; Absurd 2k, and Hard Skool 10k. I don't anticipate The General moving from the fourth spot of recent GNR singles. The most streamed Chinese Democracy track is This I Love (GNR's 18th most streamed song); followed by Better (22nd most streamed song), then Chinese Democracy (27th most streamed GNR song). In terms of GNR's top 10 streamed songs: 3 from Appetite (1. SCOM, 2. WTTJ, 3. PC) 6 from UYI (4. November Rain, 5. Knocking On Heaven's Door, 6. Don't Cry, 8. Live And Let Die, 9. You Could Be Mine, 10. Civil War). 1 from Lies (7. Patience) Highest Spaghetti Incident Song: 13. Since I Don't Have You All data/numbers from Spotify, sourced from Kworb.net.

The presence of "influences" doesn't mean something entirely new wasn't created. Never before had music involved new expressions, from chord arraignments to new understanding of chords themselves. Your understanding of creativity and originality would suggest that the colour purple isn't novel because it requires blue and red.

You might want to take a course on the invention of Jazz then.

Wait... So were there songs by the druids that opened with whistling, leading to a melody line about all the young men dying, all played in the key of Em?

Well said.

Or maybe, and hear me out on this one, most people have the same view in regards to a band that's booked $1 billion in ticket sales since 2016 resorting to AI to promote a song that didn't exactly crush it with either the casual or die hard fan... Perhaps that's not's what's being announced/released on the 24th. But if it is, I think the criticism isn't without merit.

Axl still sounded phenomenal on several GNR songs in 2016 and 2017. Whether he fronted AC/DC or not really didn't matter with respect to criticizing some of his vocal performances in Guns. In any event, I saw Axl give what is perhaps one of the greatest vocal performances I've ever seen in person when he performed with AC/DC in Philly. I would not trade it for less complaining with respect to his singing with Guns.

Israel would have been far better off going with a counter-insurgency/terrorism approach than what they're going with now. Way too heavy-handed for what they're trying to accomplish (unless what they're trying to do is the outright destruction of Gaza and the resettlement of its 2.2 million inhabitants). I suspect that had this attack occurred shortly after the US federal election this year we'd like see a different approach taken by the Biden administration.

Haven't played a game all the way through since RDR2 in 2018. Capcom released one of my all time favourite games of Mac OSX last week (and strangely launched it at 50 percent off), so I picked up Resident Evil 4. I have a fairly stacked MacBook Pro (M2 Max, 96 GB RAM, 2 TB SD) that I use for work, so I've been curious how it would handle graphically challenging games. The visuals of the RE4 remake have been astounding. I've been able to turn everything up to max and run it at 4K 60fps with hardly any dropped frames (though, it's the first time I've ever heard the fans run on my laptop). The game itself has been a lot of fun. It's likely been almost 17-18 years since I last played the original on my GameCube. There's so much of the story that I've forgotten. The Villa scene at the end of Chapter 5 is intense. I'm kind of surprised I had forgotten all about this part of the game. I'm just starting Chapter 6 and looking forward to going back after I beat it to collect all the missing treasure I missed.

They already parodied Alex Jones in GTA V. Maybe Biden, depends if he wins re-election. Doubt they'd waste any time on Ted Cruz (since the game takes place in a fictional Florida). I'm more inclined to believe they'd parody anti-vaxxers than Fauci. But we'll see...

This forum has had no contact with the band or management since 2018/2019. I do not foresee this changing anytime soon.

They'll be fine so long as people can sing "Whoa, oh, oh, Sweet child o' mine." As others have pointed out, this band has found numerous ways to trip over itself. But it can always bank on its hits to get it through. The only thing 80-90 percent of casual Guns fans want at this point is a trip down nostalgia lane. Save for any revelations of Axl or Slash being the Harvey Weinstein of rock n' roll, nothing is going to derail their general popularity. Moreover, why should anyone care at this point. Personally, I've gotten everything I've wanted out this band, save for a new album written by Axl, Slash, Duff and ideally Izzy (which is almost certainly never going to happen). Everyone here would be better off not worrying about the reputation of a band that hasn't done a lot to help itself. There are far more important things that warrant your attention and concern. Spend your time enjoying the good things about the band and music; spend less over things that don't really matter.

I initially thought Rockstar was going with the Unreal 5 engine but it turns out it’s going with their proprietary engine that ran GTAV and RDR2. It’s almost a certainty that Rockstar has upgraded and improved the engine since RDR2 considering the lighting effects present in the GTAVI trailer that were not employed in RDR2.

Let’s keep the focus in this thread on the game.

I already mentioned Trump, but I suppose they might include DJTJ as well.

Right... I was going to say we can't blame Duff for what's happening with GNR. But at what point do guys like Duff and Slash decide that between the lawsuits over sexual assault (not so much the legal action against Axl, but the lawsuit filed by Kat for harassment during their tenure), the botched release schedules, the shoddy attention to basic details, and the disaster that is mixing and mastering a GNR song these days that they decide enough is enough and they move on. There's no way either need the money anymore. The band has likely generated closed to, if not surpassed, a billion dollars since 2016 and now. Duff certainly didn't need the money before the reunion, he's got to be completely flush now. And Slash's kids are now adults, which hopefully for him means his alimony and child support payments to Perla have dropped precipitously. There's got to be a line for these guys where it makes less sense to stick around. Maybe they're actually working on a new album. Then I get it (to a certain degree). But if no album is in the works, why continue to be associated with an organization that repeatedly trips over itself almost every opportunity it gets.