What killed Chinese Democracy?

[bitstorm]

I am of the opinion that some of the songs on CD had a lot of potential to be awesome songs, but that something was lost in translation from concept to recording to the finished product.

The question is, what killed CD? Or what kills it for you?

Does anyone here feel that the songs on CD, in theory, are great songs but the production/overproduction/mix ruins them?

I just think like, songs like Better, TWAT, and Catcher could've been classics if done differently.

There isn't really anything that killed ChiDem for me personally. It's all over the board in terms of sounds and types of songs, but many great albums are like that.

I do think in time ChiDem will gain more respect, quite a bit of it is ahead of its time.

If it wasn't worth talking about, people wouldn't still be talking about it.

Edited August 20, 2013 by bitstorm

[Hollywood Gunner]

maybe that should read: Who killed Chinese Democracy?

Jessica Rabbit.

No she framed buckethead

Axl put the picture on the wall.

Dj took it down

[Bailey15]

It went through too many musicians.

The 1999 versions of all the songs, OMG, Riad, CITR, TWAT, IRS, SOD, CD, and Madagascar all sounded like they could've been classics. They were rough sounding, almost like AFD but with a different feel.

Robin, Freese, Tommy, Dizzy, Pitman, Paul, and Axl were the main song writers, along with a guest appearance from Brian May. By the time CD was released Freese and Paul were gone, Bucket and Brain had came and gone, and Bumble, Fortus, and Frank were added.

That's 13 (atleast) musicians who worked on each song. The songs were jumbled together out of parts that everyone wrote, to the point that it felt more like a poorly put together orchestra than a band, not to mention the years of axl going back and editing each song, each time adding new affects and filters.

CD isn't a bad album, but from GnR it's over produced and it gets boring. It has it's highlights and it's low points, but had it been released in 1999, or even 2002, it would've been much better.

Exactly what liers said. Most of the demos, IMO, just sounded better that the final versions. Something felt subtracted in the final versions. I had listened to the demos/leaks multiple times as they evolved and the finals were just not as good.

Another reason is the strategy of the band. They released "Chinese Democracy" as the lead single. There was a huge buildup for it, the DJ's here were really pumped and pepeople were willing to listen, but the song just didn't deliver. Hell, it's a song I often skip over because it is such a mess.

I was REALLY hoping they would have made "Better" their lead single. That was the only song that I felt had a chace to connect with the casual listener and was the only song that could have effectly bridged the divided between old and new.

GNR decided to realease it as the second single AFTER most were turned off by Chinese Democracy. They had lost the causal audience, an audience who made their judgement based on the "Chinese Democracy" single that the band had selected for them.

I'll never forget when they actually debuted "Better" on the radio station...the DJ said somethign like "here's a song that describes how Axl had sished his new album would have turned out". That was the statement to the first time they played that song. By that time most had already turned on them. I really felt it would have been different had they led with "Better".

Edited August 21, 2013 by Bailey15

[magisme]

Bad songs. Bad vocals. Bad production. 2008 not being 1998. That's what killed Chinese Democracy.

[wasted]

maybe that should read: Who killed Chinese Democracy?

Jessica Rabbit.

No she framed buckethead

Axl put the picture on the wall.

Dj took it down

and remarketed it as SWAG.

[Hollywood Gunner]

maybe that should read: Who killed Chinese Democracy?

Jessica Rabbit.

No she framed buckethead

Axl put the picture on the wall.

Dj took it down

and remarketed it as SWAG.

TM

[wasted]

maybe that should read: Who killed Chinese Democracy?

Jessica Rabbit.

No she framed buckethead

Axl put the picture on the wall.

Dj took it down

and remarketed it as SWAG.

TM

Iraq!

[Bono]

Lack of quality songs. A few really cool songs mixed in with a handful of mediocre at best songs. just my opinion. I think it's time people simply acknowledge that for most people(maybe not hardcore fans) the songs just aren't good. This conspiracy that anything else killed it is just old by now. MAYBE had it come out in 2002 it would've done better but the songs aren't that great the production is terrible and the material was never gonna grab the general public.

I am of the opinion that some of the songs on CD had a lot of potential to be awesome songs, but that something was lost in translation from concept to recording to the finished product.

The question is, what killed CD? Or what kills it for you?

Does anyone here feel that the songs on CD, in theory, are great songs but the production/overproduction/mix ruins them?

I just think like, songs like Better, TWAT, and Catcher could've been classics if done differently.

There isn't really anything that killed ChiDem for me personally. It's all over the board in terms of sounds and types of songs, but many great albums are like that.

I do think in time ChiDem will gain more respect, quite a bit of it is ahead of its time.

If it wasn't worth talking about, people wouldn't still be talking about it.

NOBODY talks about Chinese Democracy save for a handful of internet fans. I haven't heard CD or Better on radio since about 3 months after they were released as singles. Nobody cares about that album and it's not gonna gain respect years down the road.

[wasted]

you heard it on the radio, I heard Riad n the bedouins on some random internet radio station. I heard Better on knac once. I tuned in to hear Slash intro Chi dem on the radio. that was weird.

[estrangedtwat]

I do think in time ChiDem will gain more respect, quite a bit of it is ahead of its time.

If it wasn't worth talking about, people wouldn't still be talking about it.

Yeah keep dreaming. People only talk about it cause it's such a joke. Such a collossal failure. It's a cautionary tale about hubris and expectations.

It's a lousy album...it will NOT be remembered for any of its content. It will only be remembered as a punchline. It's the opposite of ahead of its time....it's quite literally a decade behind its time!!

What really killed Chinese Democracy was when it was released. If it had only existed in myth and legend, our collective imaginations would have thought of it as the greatest unheard album of all time. Just imagining Axl's soaring wailing vocals with crazy guitars and industrial rhythms.

Instead, we got a shitty collection of half-assed b-side worthy material. Songs with no hooks or melodies. Nothing catchy. Now, there WERE 3 or 4 classics that will forever live in the hearts of the GNR faithful, but to the public at large it was 70 minutes of forgettable boring mediocrity.

[Memdroid]

I do think in time ChiDem will gain more respect, quite a bit of it is ahead of its time.

If it wasn't worth talking about, people wouldn't still be talking about it.

Yeah keep dreaming. People only talk about it cause it's such a joke. Such a collossal failure. It's a cautionary tale about hubris and expectations.

It's a lousy album...it will NOT be remembered for any of its content. It will only be remembered as a punchline. It's the opposite of ahead of its time....it's quite literally a decade behind its time!!

What really killed Chinese Democracy was when it was released. If it had only existed in myth and legend, our collective imaginations would have thought of it as the greatest unheard album of all time. Just imagining Axl's soaring wailing vocals with crazy guitars and industrial rhythms.

Instead, we got a shitty collection of half-assed b-side worthy material. Songs with no hooks or melodies. Nothing catchy. Now, there WERE 3 or 4 classics that will forever live in the hearts of the GNR faithful, but to the public at large it was 70 minutes of forgettable boring mediocrity.

Agree 100%

Don't forget the whiney lyrics too! Remove buckets guitars and all falls dead on its face! He really "saved" that album becoming utter shit.

[wasted]

CD was meant to fail it's part of the myth of Chinese Democracy. I feel honored to be online when Axl went AWOL on release. CD just doesn't sound like the kind of record you go snowboarding on coke to.

[ChineseDemocracy2004]

A lot of things hurt CD;

The time it took to be released, lack of Slash, recording and re-recording.

If the album had dropped in 2002 or even 2006 who knows what could have happened?

The hype didn't help either.

No matter how good an album it is you can't help but remember how long it took to be released.

What people don't mention too often is that Axl had to re-build the band and he didn't have the band he wanted by at least 1999/2000.

I love Chinese Democracy, it's one of my favourite albums.

Edited August 21, 2013 by ChineseDemocracy2004

[RussTCB]

I was never concerned with the commercial success of CD, so

A lot of things hurt CD;

The time it took to be released, lack of Slash, recording and re-recording.

If the album had dropped in 2002 or even 2006 who knows what could have happened?

The hype didn't help either.

No matter how good an album it is you can't help but remember how long it took to be released.

What people don't mention too often is that Axl had to re-build the band and he didn't have the band he wanted by at least 1999/2000.

I love Chinese Democracy, it's one of my favourite albums.

This.

And I think it's important the remember that so many fans don't need to be invested in the commercial success of the art anyway.

[shades]

In my opinion, the real question is what killed your ear for good rock music.

granted there is a little techno experimental fail on CD but what album ever, has been 100% solid.

The fact that so many, even on a GNR web site find CD bad speaks to a lot of things, but most loudly to why Axl may no longer have a niche to succeed.

What radio station out there would play real rock music on a regular basis that wasnt 'classic' rock from years ago?

Scan across the radio dial these days and there's nothing but shit for the most part.

good luck with whatever it is you are looking for musically speaking.

the times they are a changin

[dalsh327]

Either people like an album or they don't. I'm not going to debate or defend whether or not someone likes it if they've heard and thought it was awful.

If Axl was planning on turning ChiDem into a Beach Boys Smile, they never would have done the songs in concert. It would have just been buried in the vault and talked about.

[Robert G Durant]

The wait and the lack of promotion ruined everything.

The wait gave them way too much time to tinker and overthink things, raised the audience's expectations to impossible levels, and eventually made the very idea of the album a punchline.

No one believed that album would ever be released, so even when people read that it had a firm release date they said "yeah, right", chuckled and forgot about it. They needed a TON of promotion to get people to believe it was happening. A couple black and white text-only TV commercials that looked like they were made in Windows movie paker 98 just didn't cut it. They needed commercials filled with live footage on TV and in movie theater pre-movie shows, tons of live performances and interviews on TV, big store displays like when Wal-Mart added an entire AC/DC merchandise department for the release of Black Ice.

Add to that all the die-hards already having complete versions of the majority of the songs, and you've got a flop.

I think if GnR wrote/recorded an album in three weeks, and then dumped it onto iTunes the same day as a VMA Performance or an American Idol finale appearance, they could pull Bon Jovi-level sales.

[bitstorm]

I do think in time ChiDem will gain more respect, quite a bit of it is ahead of its time.

If it wasn't worth talking about, people wouldn't still be talking about it.

Yeah keep dreaming. People only talk about it cause it's such a joke. Such a collossal failure. It's a cautionary tale about hubris and expectations.

It's a lousy album...it will NOT be remembered for any of its content. It will only be remembered as a punchline. It's the opposite of ahead of its time....it's quite literally a decade behind its time!!

What really killed Chinese Democracy was when it was released. If it had only existed in myth and legend, our collective imaginations would have thought of it as the greatest unheard album of all time. Just imagining Axl's soaring wailing vocals with crazy guitars and industrial rhythms.

Instead, we got a shitty collection of half-assed b-side worthy material. Songs with no hooks or melodies. Nothing catchy. Now, there WERE 3 or 4 classics that will forever live in the hearts of the GNR faithful, but to the public at large it was 70 minutes of forgettable boring mediocrity.

Thanks for proving my point!

[TeeJay410]

Ultimately, it was released 5-10 years too late. Late 90's would have been ideal, though velvet Revolver actually have Axl another chance by bringing interest in GnR back. Time passed them by.