Metallica

That would be awesome. Plus Lady Gaga has been vocal about being into metal for years now, time to prove it by making a metal album.
 
Lady Gaga has more airplay, earns more money and has her videos watched more often. Also probably has some insanely successful singles.

Metallica have more album sales, concert attendance. Way bigger artist, even if they make less money.
 
Forostar said:
Metallica have more album sales.
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Incorrect. Lady Gaga has sold 95.3 million total certified units while Metallica have sold 92.7 million. And Lady Gaga has 5 studio albums compared to Metallica's 10.

Forostar said:
Metallica have more concert attendance.
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Not big enough to give them an edge. 2.5 million people attended Lady Gaga's Monster Ball Tour between '09-'11, 2.7 million people attended Metallica's World Magnetic Tour between '08-'10.

There's very little, if any, argument that supports the claim that Metallica is bigger than Lady Gaga. To suggest they're "Way bigger" is just way off.
 
The Flash said:
Incorrect. Lady Gaga has sold 95.3 million total certified units while Metallica have sold 92.7 million. And Lady Gaga has 5 studio albums compared to Metallica's 10.
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Those are not album only units, are they? A combination of all kinds of stuff (singles included).

Lady Gaga wiki:
With global album and single sales of 27 million and 146 million respectively, as of January 2016, she is one of the best-selling musicians of all time.

Metallica wiki:
Metallica ranks as one of the most commercially successful bands of all time, having sold over 110 million records worldwide.

I thought the 110 would be albums.
 
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Forostar said:
I thought the 110 would be albums.
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There's no way of telling that's the case.

Album sales isn't a good measure when comparing Gaga and Metallica anyway, because album sales in general are suffering a massive drop off in the modern era and they're artists of different times. You have a lot of measures favoring Gaga at the moment, I don't think there's any shame in admitting that Gaga is a bigger artist, she's a pop singer. Big name pop singers are always bigger than metal bands.

Influence is a different issue.
 
It's worth mentioning that while Gaga might be more popular now, she is definitely on the decline. Metallica have longevity and will be able to play arenas until they retire. Dunno if that will be the case for Gaga, but right now I'm thinking she has an expiration date.
 
I actually like Lady Gaga; I think she is a talented performer, singer, and all-around musician. However, I don't think she fits with Metallica. The performance of Moth Into Flame - disregarding the technical issues - was just strange. I don't think her vocals fit the song, and I'm having trouble finding a song of theirs they would fit over. However, a Hetfield-only rendition of Poker Face may be the coolest thing ever.
 
The problem is that Metallica vocals usually don't have a lot of melody going on them. They really rely on the grit on James' voice and his delivery.

I'd be more interested in them doing a collab album than perform on stage together.
 
The Flash said:
The problem is that Metallica vocals usually don't have a lot of melody going on them. They really rely on the grit on James' voice and his delivery.
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This was my first thought when I heard of the collaboration. It's an interesting combo, but Metallica's vocal lines are notoriously not melodic. That being said, Moth In the Flame is one of their more vocally melodic tunes, so it was a good choice.
But yea, having a singer with actual chops could add a new dimension to Metallica's sound. One area where LuLu fell flat is that Lou Reed is even less of a singer than Hetfield is.
 
I would really like it if this whole Gagatallica nonsense stopped. I don't mind her too much even though I don't listen to pop but it's a silly combo.
 
Album sales could be not part very important in that definition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallica_discography
2016. Metallica has sold more than 200 million albums worldwide, with over 60 million records in the United States alone (54,365,000 albums since 1991 when SoundScan started tracking actual sales figure).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Gaga_discography
As of January 2016, she has sold an estimated 27 million albums and 146 million singles worldwide. She has also sold around 7.25 million singles in the United Kingdom, and 10.4 million albums in US; in the latter country she is the first and only artist to have two songs pass 7 million downloads ("Poker Face" and "Just Dance"). According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Gaga is the fourth-best-selling digital singles artist in the United States, with cumulative single certifications of 59 million digital downloads and on-demand streaming.


I would not be surprised if Metallica sold more albums when they had an eight an a half year long discography (this includes The Black album).

Latest album figures (Metallica's latest album was released one month earlier than Lady Gaga's):

Metallica: Hardwired... to Self-Destruct
  • Released: November 18, 2016
US: 570,000
  • Worldwide: 2,500,000

  • RIAA: Gold
  • ARIA: Gold
  • BPI: Gold
  • BVMI: 3× Gold
  • MC: Platinum
  • RMNZ: Gold

Lady Gaga: Joanne
  • Released: October 21, 2016
  • US: 435,000
  • FRA: 12,000
  • UK: 90,624

  • BPI: Gold
  • MC: Gold
Lady Gaga a bigger artist? Well, she is a huge (digital) single artist. Album wise, Metallica is out of her league.

Yes, Lady Gaga is a pop artist, but Metallica is so big that they dwarf most pop artists.
 
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As I said, artists of different eras. Lady Gaga's first record came out in the same year as Death Magnetic. Physical copy sales are way down across the board. Metallica also put out 5 more studio albums. Most of Lady Gaga's generation of fans are millennials who are used to digital downloads.

And even still, as you can see, the gap between their latest album sales isn't huge. And that's with Gaga's album not receiving a good reception. The argument is not huge enough to trump the other arguments.

Were Metallica bigger than Lady Gaga in their primes? Absolutely. By quite a margin. But currently? Probably not.
 
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jazz from hell said:
Good for you. But what's your and Perun's own provable definition of an artist?
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That's a textbook example of moving goalposts. You challenge a claim, somebody else asks you for evidence, and you demand that a completely new claim that you make should be disproved instead. Wonderful.
 
To discuss this (even remotely), it would be handy to know what people take into account when measuring greatness (or size).

I find album sales and audience figures (concert attendance) important.

Artistic integrity is also a factor I find very important, but this is (more) difficult to express in numbers.
 
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