Platinum debuted at number one on theBillboard 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 aGrammy Award for Best Country Album as well as aCMA Award andACM Award in the same category. The album was certifiedplatinum for sales of one million copies in the United States.
Lambert wrote or co-wrote eight of the album's 16 tracks. The album features collaborations withLittle Big Town ("Smokin' and Drinkin'") andThe Time Jumpers ("All That's Left"), as well as a duet withCarrie 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]
Platinum was released byRCA Nashville on June 3, 2014.[3] It debuted at number one on both theBillboard 200 andTop 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 theBillboard 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 theCanadian Albums Chart with first-week sales of 9,300 copies.[5] On February 1, 2016, it was certifiedplatinum by theRecording 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", thetop-20 hit "Little Red Wagon", "Smokin' and Drinkin'", and "Somethin' Bad".[8] Lambert debut the latter song with Underwood at the2014 Billboard Music Awards on May 18, 2014,[9] and performed it again on June 4, during theCMT Music Awards.[10] In support ofPlatinum, she embarked on a concert tour of North America in mid 2014, featuringJustin Moore andThomas Rhett as her opening acts.[11]
Platinum was met with widespread critical acclaim. AtMetacritic, which assigns anormalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received anaverage score of 86, based on 11 reviews.[21]
In a review published byCuepoint,Robert Christgau hailedPlatinum 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 fromAllMusic said the record was shrewdly produced with Lambert's attempts at modernpop songs sequenced ahead of the more authentic country material,[2] whileWill Hermes wrote inRolling 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 thePazz & Jop, an annual poll of American critics published byThe Village Voice.[23] Christgau, the poll's creator, named it the year's second best record in his year-end list forThe Barnes & Noble Review.[24] The album was also ranked fifth and nineteenth best byRolling Stone[25] andSpin,[26] respectively. At the 2014CMA Awards, it won in the "Album of the Year" category.[27] It also earned Lambert theBest Country Album award at the57th Grammy Awards in 2015.[28]
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