You think you’re feeling the pinch of these troubled economic times? Try working for a record label. U.S. album sales for 2008 were down roughly 15 percent from a year ago, and 2009 looks even bleaker.
Which albums have been leading the charge for this ignominious race to the bottom? Here, based on Metromix’s quasi-scientific number crunching, are the 20 albums that were the best (worst?) representation of the music industry’s dismal year.
After 15 years, millions of dollars and countless leaks, Axl Rose’s magnum opus finally limped into Best Buys nationwide, where it managed to sell a paltry 261,000 copies in its first week and 360,000 through Dec. 14. It may be too soon to declare “Chinese Democracy” a flop—it only came out on Nov. 23—but it’s probably a safe bet that it won’t come close to the sales figures of GNR’s heyday, or recoup the $13 million it reportedly cost to produce. That’s why “Chinese Democracy”—despite that fact that it’s not a bad record—gets our vote as the biggest flop of 2008.
