What was the first-ever platinum single?
Like it or not, commercial acclaim and the industry’s means of measuring it are the biggest benchmarks of success for any work within its ecosystem. We can debate all day, every day, about what it means to be successful and why focusing on commercialism is the ultimate downfall of art, but when it comes to it, sales and units remain the only objective quantifier of what the word itself means.
Of course, that’s not entirely true, though, is it? As factual as numbers seem, there are endless possibilities when it comes to what success truly means. Take a look at some of the most innovative artists in history: most of them spoke about selling out at one point or another, usually in the context of venturing too close to commercialism and abandoning their own artistic principles.
What makes this even more interesting is that a lot of these relate to popular breakthroughs, like Metallica’s pivot towards a more polished sound with The Black Album, or David Bowie’s unrelenting distaste for ‘Space Oddity’. In Bowie’s mind, or his words, rather, ‘Space Oddity’ was “a farce song” written as an “antidote to space fever”. Or, as Tony Visconti more succinctly put it, it was a “cheap shot”.
Still, the track reached platinum certification in a handful of countries, including the UK, proving just how much Bowie’s disdain for such a move clashed with the public’s response. But what exactly does it mean to achieve platinum status, and who was the first to be awarded the label? The metric was introduced almost two decades after the RIAA introduced the gold record for sales in 1958, which celebrated records with sales over 500,000 units.
Who achieved the first-ever platinum single?
As the industry grew and sales soared beyond their gold status, the need for a fitting measurement became clear. And so, platinum was introduced in 1976 to recognise one million sales, the first going to soul singer Johnnie Taylor for his single ‘Disco Lady’. Initially, a song Taylor didn’t feel was right for him, ‘Disco Lady’ could have gone either way, though his producer Don Davies remained adamant, and it ended up being an R&B smash, tackling disco without having to live up to its sensibilities.
“A lot of people thought it was disco,” Taylor said, per Mojo. “But it was not a disco tune. We were just talking about disco”. ‘Disco Lady’ sold over two million units in the US, though it would be no match for the first-ever platinum album, which was the Eagles’ Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975), which achieved 38x platinum in the US with over 38million units sold, numbers that also make it the best-selling album of the 20th century.
Still, all things considered, these certifications certainly sound nice, but what do they mean, beyond recognising mass success? Obviously, they’re important to the industry’s standards, but how many remain frozen in time, or how often do these limitations break out of their own culture and eras, remaining ever-relevant, just like the Eagles’ Their Greatest Hits? Sometimes, all they’re good for is flagging cultural shifts, some evidently far more meaningful than others.
