Hallucination said:
#1 Even a statistically accurate opinion poll of people TODAY in 2005 on what was more popular at a time period that is over 10 years ago is a very poor and inaccurate way to gauge which product is more popular.
#2 For any poll to be representive of North America on any issue one would have to ask well over 1,000 people currently living in all the different states and regions of North America.
#3 People's perceptions of what is bigger is often based on simple media exposure at that time. But this is not an accurate gauge of who is the biggest. In addition, when asking someone what was bigger 13 years ago, people might actually be thinking about 17 years ago. When you get that far in the past with something like this, something most people never ever think about, the memory of when certain things occur get blurred.
#4 Guns N Roses is finished as a band. I know, Axl's version of the band may come to life one day, but it hasn't yet except for playing a few shows. Guns N Roses in retrospect has been done as a band since 1993. I know there were attempts after that to continue with the original line up, but few if anyone except die hard fans know that. Their last bit of significant exposure came in 1993. With the band being done, there comes a significant nostalgia based perception about them. When an artist is essentially no more for what ever the reason, they climb several notches on people's ratings overall as a band as well as a major force in the music world. So any question asked about Guns N Roses is heavily influenced by this factor. People remember this great legendary band from the past, and many people there for have an inaccurate and elevated perception of the bands importance, popularity, and status over a brief 3 years from 1991-1993. Although many people refer to U2 as legendary and U2 have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, U2 are such a massive and currently popular force and have been consistently for so many years that people don't accociate them with the past in the way they do with an artist that is not still active like Guns N Roses or Nirvana. In any event though, an opinion poll of people's perception of what was more popular over 10 years ago is probably the most inaccurate way to determine who actually was more popular.
#5 Current Album sales and Concert drawing power are what determine the popularity of any artist at any time. Your average person back then or today don't know how much the albums sold or precisely how well the concerts did, nor do they know where to get such information. But I have precise album sales data for the time period as well as most of the reported Boxscores for both concert tours. RIAA records and certifies album sale data for the USA. CRIA does if for Canada. IFPI does it for Europe. Amusement Business records publishes concert attendance and Gross figures for all shows around the world.
#5 Achtung Baby and Use Your Illusion both sold roughly the same worldwide with Achtung Baby edging out Use Your Illusion in this catagory just slightly. But I have noticed that in Canada Use Your Illusion was a faster seller and appears to have sold slightly more in Canada than Achtung Baby. This is the reverse though in the United States. In other parts of the world, its more of the same story with Achtung Baby with a slight lead. The United Kingdom is one country where Achtung Baby led by a ratio of 4 to 1 though.
#6 Concert drawing power is where U2 really seperates itself from Guns N Roses in this time period. Name virtually any city in North America and I can show you the official statistics from Amusement Business which show that U2 were the bigger concert drawing band. This generally holds true outside of North America as well. In general, Guns N Roses were an Arena band in North America, while U2 were a Stadium level band. Yes, GNR played stadiums in North America, but on a co-headlining bill with Metallica. Even with Metallica they could not achieve U2's concert attendance in many cities. Case in point, the GNR/Metallica tour did not even attempt to play Philadelphia and only played one show in Washington DC. You could buy tickets the day of the show in Washington DC. For U2, the first show soldout in one hour and they were able to sellout another full stadium show. 2 soldout U2 stadium shows in Washington DC VS. one show by the combined GNR/Metallica team that did not even sellout.
). Their third album is the fastest selling album of all time in the UK at 695,761 in its first week. For the UK that's a lot. Even Coldplay's X&Y album couldn't beat the first week sales of this album coming in second place with 464,471. Though only over the counter sales are used to calculate the figure so perhaps that affected Coldplay's total. 
