The Irish Times doesn't see it like that. From last week:
"The title of best band in the world has been vacant since The Beatles split up in 1970. No band has come close to matching their creative or commercial success, not even U2, despite Bono’s hubris when he said they were reapplying for the “best band in the world job”.
Such presumption sits uneasily with the facts. The title of best band in the world is a matter of opinion. It is a fact, though, that AC/DC (180 million album sales) are a bigger band than U2 (140 million album sales) and probably the biggest selling band in the world. I
n the US last year, AC/DC’s new album Black Ice sold 784,000 copies in its first week of release, 300,000 copies more than U2’s No Line on the Horizon . With these kind of figures there is no contest in what is probably the biggest music market in the world.
Back in Black , the album AC/DC recorded in the immediate aftermath of the death of their first singer Bon Scott and the band’s finest achievement, is now the second biggest-selling album of all time after Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
AC/DC have managed to reach this elevated status by breaking every music convention and doing it all on their own terms. They are rarely heard on the radio, they have never released a greatest hits collection and they are one of the few acts in the world who can reject iTunes and still sell millions of records...
Their Live At Donnington DVD, released in 2003, is the most successful live DVD of all time and still their records keep selling...
AC/DC do entertainment better than any other band. That’s why they are the biggest band in the world."
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