Given the criteria in the OP, I think it has to be Green Day, especially in terms of mainstream appeal. Foo Fighters would probably come in third, again, almost by default. It’s been too long since the Chilis released something, unfortunately.
The rock CDs I have been looking forward to over the last few years have all been by relatively newer bands, and/or bands that don’t have the mainstream crossover appeal that the OP would seem to require. I mean, a new Tool CD might well be the most anticipated release of whenever-the-heck-they-get-around-to-it, and they always have complete tour success… but you aren’t going to see Tool singles climbing the charts en masse, I don’t think, given the way that those things work.
Tool strikes me as one of those bands that has a really strong fanbase so their shows sell out without as much airplay or hit singles. Another band like that is Depeche Mode. If you listened to most mass media, the vast majority of the time you wouldn’t notice that they even exist. But when they tour, it sells out in minutes every time. Both bands experience the bump on release day where all of the fans rush out to buy the new releases during the first week so they chart really high. Then within two weeks, all of the hardcore fans have bought the album and it sinks like a rock on the charts.
Yes, I completely forgot about The Foo Fighters. Foo has had ~ twenty charted singles as well, but I still think Green Day narrowly edges them out.
Coldplay and Linkin Park would be right up there too. Probably in the Top 5.
Well I did say “heavily weighted towards recent years”. The Stones havn’t had many successful singles or albums, relatively speaking, in the last, oh, twenty or so years, with a few exceptions. Their tour success is undeniable, however, and has kept them up there.
I know, how can one say “The Greatest Rock Band In The World” is not the “biggest”? It’s an interesting question. Right now, I think U2 is bigger. The Stones are definitely still up there, even after forty some years!
The Stones are a huge concert draw, but they tend to sell a fraction of the number of albums of whoever their opening act is. I personally haven’t bought a new Stones album since Some Girls.
Sheryl Crow is a serious contender. Not sure how she rates with the kids, but for the over-30 crowd, she is friggin’ huge, one of the last of the old-school arena draws (I can’t imagine Nickelback filling a baseball stadium on their own). She’s my pick for #2 after U2.
John Mayer and Jack Johnson have a vast army of mousy office girls who would kill or die for them. Not to my taste, but they belong on the list somewhere. And Jimmy Buffett is a top concert draw whom country artists are suddenly in a hurry to record duets with.
Her fans love her to death, but there aren’t as many of them as there were 12 years ago. The Beekeeper isn’t on the Billboard 100 and she hasn’t had a radio-friendly single since “Cornflake Girl,” circa 1995. She doesn’t meet any of the OP’s criteria. Sorry.
I don’t know where Springsteen fits on this scale, but he’s worth mentioning simply becuase he basically opted out of big-time rock stardom in many ways. He could easily fill 100 football stadiums a year if he wanted to; instead he’s chosen to play smaller venues.
I remember when U2 was alternative, not mainstream.
Alan Cross had an interesting thing on his on going history of New Music. he asked “What’s the biggest selling Alternative album of all time?” After a fairly wide-ranging show, proposing some of the biggest acts on the Indy/Industrial/Alternative scene, he finally answered with the Joshua Tree. 15 Million copies sold, IIRC.
He then followed up with “Can any band that sells 15 million copies of an album still be considered Alternative?”
Anyway, with absolutely no research to back me up, I’d call it a throw-down between Green Day and Coldplay.
Good pick, but it looks like she has had more Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary hits than Rock hits. I think of her as more of a singer/songwriter pop singer, but she certainly can rock, though.
12 big hits, 5 big albums, great live performer…She’s gotta be up there.
Another good pick that I had forgotten about.
These guys are in a class all by themselves. A hair metal/rock/pop band that refuses to go away. 100 million albums sold, 19 U.S. hits, spread across three different decades consistently, countless successful tours, yeah, they gotta be up there, too!
What Krokodil said. She’s got a very devoted fanbase, which makes her tours very successful, but since the OP put album sales and hits first, it can’t be her. She had one or two fairly successful singles from Scarlett’s Walk, but in recent years hasn’t been a big chart presence.
If not for the way the OP is written, I’d suggest the Stones or Paul McCartney, depending on how big they are worldwide (I only know how big their tours are in the US). Neither one sells a lot of new albums - as noted, U2’s newest have sold plenty, but haven’t been blockbusters - but their tours are huge. I’m not entirely sure what it says about the state of rock today that some of the top contenders for biggest artist are in their 60s.
Addressing bunches of different things we’ve hit on:
I could definitely deal with Bon Jovi, I completely forgot about them too. Another band that (like U2) has had all sorts of maturation of sound and style, and continues to be way up there twenty-some years after they first hit it big.
I brought up the whole “mainstream” thing in my earlier post because there are large numbers of artists who just don’t work for large portions of the “rock” audience, going both ways. I used Tool as an example because the whole “pop” half of the rock spectrum probably doesn’t care at all about them; Coldplay, which some people are mentioning, goes the other way, as pretty significant numbers of rock fans couldn’t give half a damn about them. It doesn’t take anything away from either band, but I find it hard to believe that an artist could be “the second biggest rock artist in the world right now” without an appeal that hits pretty much everywhere across the spectrum.
Linkin Park is still together and working on their third album, as far as I know.
I tend to go with Caissa and think that Sheryl Crow is more true pop and adult contemporary than rock, per se. Though I’m a big fan of most of Tuesday Night Music Club.
I think you’re splitting hairs to exclude Sheryl Crow–her CDs are in the Rock bins at Wal-Mart and Tower Records, that’s good enough for me–but I’m not gonna fight about it.
The band you’re forgetting about is Aerosmith. Still filling the big arenas, selling respectably, still big with rebellious teenagers. Anything you like about Bon Jovi applies double to Aerosmith.
