The new Guns N' Roses album has arrived. It's called Chinese Democracy, it has 14 songs and cost a reported $13 million to make.

I loved Guns N' Roses back when it was, y'know, a real band. Appetite for Destruction remains one of the great rock albums of all time, and if you reduce Use Your Illusion down to a single CD, the same could be said for that collection of excess.

But 17 years is a long time to wait for something new, and I must admit I moved on a long, long time ago. About a month back, I saw the new Ridley Scott movie Body of Lies. It's okay, but most of the fun for me was seeing D.C. neighborhoods digitally altered to appear like Amsterdam, London and other foreign locales. At the end, though, there was this song. It was loud, it was bombastic and the singer had a certain plaintive quality to his wail.

"That's Guns N' Roses," I said. "Or maybe just Axl Rose. I don't know what's what these days."

So I dutifully waited through the credits and, lo ad behold, it was Guns 'N Roses. More specifically, it was song called "If the World," which is track #5 on the new disc.

I didn't rush out to Best Buy and purchase the album today. In fact, I won't be buying it at all. While I still like bombastic rock (well, sort of), Guns N' Roses holds little appeal for me.

But I was curious about the $13 million figure. That's a lot of money for an album, especially these days. I mean, you can assemble a solid home recording studio for a grand or two (assuming you've already got a computer), and after that there's almost no cost.

This has been true for a long time. I remember telling someone that the song "I'm Too Sexy" could've been recorded for $400 or so. Turns out my estimate was a bit on the high side.

Bleach, Nirvana's first full-length album, famously cost $606.17 (this figure was featured on the sleeve of the vinyl). It is a Jack Endino production, which means thick and fuzzy and decidedly non-radio friendly, but it's an album by one of the most famous bands of all time--possibly even more legendary than GN'R itself.

Back in 1985, Clive Davis confirmed that Whitney Houston's first album cost around $250,000. This was an astounding figure for a debut album (and truly, any album) at the time. He justified it by saying Whitney was going to be one of the great pop stars of all time. All hail the righteous Clive.

A few years later, Tears for Fears spent a few years recording the follow-up to Songs from the Big Chair (Everybody Wants to Rule the World," etc.). The result was Sowing the Seeds of Love, which was marketed (with a sticker on the cover, if I recall correctly) as the most expensive album of all time. At $2 million (give or take), its title has officially been usurped by Axl and his boys, though my guess is Michael Jackson stole the crown a while back.

$13 mil is some serious dough. Let's run the math, throw up some equations and make a few judgments.

Chinese Democracy=6.5 Sowing the Seeds of Loves
Sowing the Seeds of Love is bloated and way over the top, but that's what everyone is saying about Chinese Democracy as well. I'd call this one a draw. Once you reach the limits of pretension, it doesn't matter how far you fall over the edge. Or, as Dennis Miller used to say about two-for-one sales on lime green leisure suits, "If they really want to fuck you, they'll give you three."

Chinese Democracy=52 Whitney Houstons
I'm not a Whitney Houston fan. At all. So I decided to look at it this way: Could I find 14 songs in her entire catalog that would match up to the stuff on the new GN'R? I thought really hard about it. And I think the answer is: No matter how dreary the new material may be, GN'R wins.

Chinese Democracy=21446 Bleachs
No contest. The chorus to "School" alone (Kurt Kobain hoarsely shouting "No recess!" over and over again) has to be far better than anything on the new GN'R. I'm not the world's biggest Nirvana fan, and despite stylistic differences I think the two bands at their peaks were similarly awesome, but there's no way Axl can win this one. In fact, Bleach might well be worth 21446 copies of Chinese Democracy.

Chinese Democracy=at least 37143 "I'm So Sexy"s
I spent a long time puzzling this one out. "I'm So Sexy" is one of the most annoying songs of all time. But if the same guys were able to record some 37,000 songs, could 14 of them match up to the reportedly middling fare of the new GN'R? This turned into one of those infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters questions. I went back and forth until "My Michelle" happened to pop up on my iTunes. TKO, baby. GN'R in a walk.

So, you know, maybe $13 million is a fair price for a new Guns N' Roses album. Though I think Axl Rose would have been even more legendary had he gone the route of Harper Lee, who has yet to publish a second novel. Can you imagine: $13 million (or more) and no album, ever?

That, ladies and gentlemen, would have been a pure rock and roll move.

When speaking, Jon Worley refers to the band as Guns N' fuckin' Roses. Without exception. This is but one reason his sons know nothing about the band.