99.4% of people have electricity, and only 8.1 million haven’t.
Not sure why the two different numbers, but both indicate that most Chinese folk have electricity just fine.
(Ah - the difference is that the first number is China and East Asia; the second one is China. So, yeah, pretty much all Chinese people have electricity).
I wanted to work the Stones in, but honest question; when were the Rolling Stones the world’s absolutely premiere rock band?
As near as I can tell, basically never. They have been a huge band for a long time but someone was always bigger. Were the Stones the biggest thing in music in the 60s? No, the Beatles were. Early 70s? No, I’d say Elton John and Zeppelin, at least, were bigger. Late 70s? If we’re counting all pop music the Bee Gees and ABBA were bigger. Their track record is amazing, but I don’t think you can point to any time in their history and say “and that’s when they were the biggest thing going in music.”
You could say the Stones were the Stan Musial of rock. Consistently good, definitely among the all-time greats, but never quite the best in the business at any given moment. Stan always had a Ted Williams or a Willie Mays who was a little better, and the Stones always had the Beatles or Elton John or…
I would have put them up there even earlier, with the release of Let It Bleed in December 1969, but their subsequent three studio albums–Sticky Fingers (1971), Exile on Main St. (1972), and Goats Head Soup (1973)–all had long runs at #1 on the US and UK album charts, according to Wikipedia. So I think there’s a strong case to be made that they were the biggest band in the world for at least a bit during that period.
Following up on my previous post, Led Zeppelin hit #1 on the US and UK charts with Led Zeppelin II (October 1969), Led Zeppelin III (October 1970), Houses of the Holy (March 1973), Physical Graffiti (February 1975), Presence (March 1976), and In Through the Out Door (August 1979). The only studio album in that range that didn’t reach #1 on both charts, oddly enough, was IV (November 1971), which hit #1 in the UK, but peaked at #2 in the US.
That’s a damn impressive run. I hadn’t realized that they were quite that successful in terms of the album charts.
Throw in enough qualifiers, and pretty much anybody can claim to have been “the biggest.” Somebody once told Cowboy Troy that he was “the biggest Black Country Rapper in the world!” He replied “No. I am the ONLY Black Country Rapper in the world.”
Vanilla Ice gets (and deserves) very little respect these days, but in that awkward period circa 1990 when the major labels unceremoniously scrapped the LP format (and basically orphaned cassettes and anything that wasn’t a CD), Ice dominated Rolling Stone’s charts for the better part of two years. When he disappeared, these were dominated instead by Mariah Carey. Yep, the period everybody remembers as being owned by Nirvana and Pearl Jam was in fact ruled by these twin embarrassments.
We remember the Beatles dominating the early 60s, but a lot of those years actually saw superior sales by people like Mitch Miller and Dave Brubeck. PLAYBOY’s music polls barely mentioned the Beatles or the Stones until after the former broke up and Brian Jones drowned, but they weren’t pitching to the same demographic as these bands, of course.
And there were those late-night ads by the likes of Boxcar Willie and Slim Whitman baldfacedly claiming that these artists outsold the Beatles, without specifying the year or market. Cheap Trick made a lot of hay of the fact they sold more tickets at Budokan than the Beatles had a decade or so earlier; they didn’t mention that Budokan had added a few more seats in the interim.
True enough, the best selling single of 1964 was not a Beatle song- it was Louis Armstrong’s “Hello Dolly.” Was Louis, therefore, “bigger than the Beatles”? Well, the Beatles had a BUNCH of number one singles that year, while Louis only had one. And at NO time in his great career could Louis Armstrong have sold out Shea Stadium, or even Madison Square Garden.
It also sold 10 million albums in the US alone. Given the radio airplay, chart success, sales, and MTV impact, I think there is easily an argument made for their inclusion.
Are you serious? Their most popular album didn’t even top the charts in either the US or UK, and they merit inclusion in an argument as the biggest band in the world?
I think in all the given criteria INXS warrant a mention. Like WordMan said upthread, at some point (maybe a month, maybe even a week) with all the venues in the media, a lot of unlikely contenders bubbled to the top, bands you wouldn’t ordinarily think of.
And what about singles? “Need You Tonight” was a US Billboard #1 single and listed as the second best selling single of that year.
Using your criteria, I nominate Shania Twain, Boston, Hootie and the Blowfish, Journey, and the Dixie chicks.
On a more serious note, using the criteria that his popularity was so big that even over here we were swamped by it, how about Garth Brooks. For a period of about a year that guy bloody massive. If you thought country, you thought of Garth Brooks. At that time he could rightly claim to be one of the biggest acts on the planet, no matter how far his star has fallen.
I don’t disagree. This isn’t about impact, or legacy. Simply, who had garnered the attention of the world, even momentarily. Garth was massive and the only issue I might take (as with Hootie and Dixie Chicks) is that they seemed to have found success mainly in North America (someone can correct me if I’m wrong). Certainly, they were the biggest acts on this continent for some period of time.
Looking at your location, I see that’s true for Garth et al. There you go!
