Platinum debuted at number one on the
Billboard 200, becoming Lambert's first to top the chart, while selling 180,000 copies in its first week. It received widespread critical acclaim and earned Lambert a
Grammy Award for Best Country Album as well as a
CMA Award and
ACM Award in the same category. The album was certified
platinum for sales of one million copies in the United States.
Writing and recording
Lambert wrote or co-wrote eight of the album's 16 tracks. The album features collaborations with
Little Big Town ("Smokin' and Drinkin'") and
The Time Jumpers ("All That's Left"), as well as a duet with
Carrie Underwood on "
Somethin' Bad".[1] It was recorded in sessions at Cyclops Sound in Los Angeles, Dave's Room in Hollywood, and the Nashville-based studios Ronnie's Place, Ben's Studio, Sound Stage Studios, St. Charles Studio, and The House.[2]
Release and promotion
Platinum was released by
RCA Nashville on June 3, 2014.[3] It debuted at number one on both the
Billboard 200 and
Top Country Albums charts while selling 180,000 copies in the United States, becoming the highest first-sales week of Lambert's career.[4] It was also her first album to reach the top of the Billboard 200,[4] and marked her fifth consecutive number-one debut on the Top Country Albums, making her the first artist in the history of the chart to start her career with five number-one albums.[4] It debuted at number one on the
Canadian Albums Chart with first-week sales of 9,300 copies.[5] On February 1, 2016, it was certified
platinum by the
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).[6] By September 2016, the album had sold 850,000 copies in the US.[7]
Four singles were released in promotion of the album: the lead single "Automatic", the
top-20 hit "Little Red Wagon", "Smokin' and Drinkin'", and "Somethin' Bad".[8] Lambert debut the latter song with Underwood at the
2014 Billboard Music Awards on May 18, 2014,[9] and performed it again on June 4, during the
CMT Music Awards.[10] In support of Platinum, she embarked on a concert tour of North America in mid 2014, featuring
Justin Moore and
Thomas Rhett as her opening acts.[11]
Platinum was met with widespread critical acclaim. At
Metacritic, which assigns a
normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an
average score of 86, based on 11 reviews.[21]
In a review published by Cuepoint,
Robert Christgau hailed Platinum as the year's most daring and consummate big-budget record, featuring "apolitical de facto feminism at its countriest".[14]The New York Times critic Jon Caramanica found it "vivacious, clever and slickly rowdy", showing Lambert had finally become "a sophisticated radical, a wry country feminist and an artist learning to experiment widely but also with less abrasion".[22]Stephen Thomas Erlewine from
AllMusic said the record was shrewdly produced with Lambert's attempts at modern
pop songs sequenced ahead of the more authentic country material,[2] while
Will Hermes wrote in Rolling Stone that Lambert incorporated both traditional and alternative elements from country into her homespun, feminine perspective.[18]Spin magazine's Dan Hyman was less enthusiastic, singling out the collaborations on "Smokin' and Drinkin'" and "Something Bad" as contrived appeals to pop audiences on what was an otherwise consistent and carefully crafted record.[19]
At the end of 2014, Platinum was voted the 12th-best album of the year in the
Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of American critics published by The Village Voice.[citation needed] Christgau, the poll's creator, named it the year's second best record in his year-end list for The Barnes & Noble Review.[23] The album was also ranked fifth and nineteenth best by Rolling Stone and Spin, respectively.[citation needed] At the 2014
CMA Awards, it won in the "Album of the Year" category.[24] It also earned Lambert the
Best Country Album award at the
57th Grammy Awards in 2015.[25]