YMMV / Chinese Democracy

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• Broken Base: For some, the album is an unmitigated disaster. Others just find it a flawed record with some bright spots.
• Memetic Mutation: Chinese Democracy's delays^Explanation The album became notorious over the years for its constant delays in production, starting in 1993 and not coming out until 2008 (with the first five years of production being primarily occupied by Axl Rose trying to wrestle with the band's collapsing lineup). Consequently, the album became a popular punchline among music fans and a byword for extreme cases of Development Hell (in a similar vein as the also-constantly-delayed Duke Nukem Forever, whose Troubled Production overlapped with that of this album), leading to jokes like "China will actually democratize before Chinese Democracy comes out."
• Protection from Editors: The album is the prime example of what happens when an egotistical tyrant is given virtually limitless time and cash to record a follow-up album.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general critical consensus, as well as for many listeners — not what you'd expect after over a decade of production. Ironically this seemed to damn the album even more. If it had been a terrible album then at least it would have been remembered forever as one of the biggest disasters in music history given the years and money that went into it. Instead, it is just...okay and has been nearly forgotten compared to GNR's other works.

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