One year on from the release of “Golden”, just how successful (or not) has CountryKylie been?
It’s hard to believe that a year has now passed since Kylie Minogue released her fourteenth studio album “Golden“, attracting both critical acclaim as well as criticism from both the music industry as well as her fans. Some wanted a return to the dancefloor, others wanted DiscoKylie, but what she herself settled for was something more middle of the road, pop, dance with a twist of Dolly and plenty of Nashville notes. But has this ‘experiment’ worked or has expectation and chart success failed to match up to hopes and budgets?
We have covered the “Golden” era in a previous article so I won’t bother you with a review of the whole year and what happened each and every month, however, it cannot be said that the lead single from the album (“Dancing”) has not been an unoquivical success. With UK sales of 200,000 copies and Australian sales in excess of 35,000 copies (gaining a Gold certification), “Dancing” has been a slow, consistent burner all year. It topped the US Dance hot play chart – Kylie’s fourteenth number one – and has a YouTube count of over fourteen million so far, as well as being her second most played track on Spotify. Only “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” betters it!
“Stop Me From Falling”, with its two videos totalling eighteen million YouTube views, became a moderate success in the single charts, in a world where it seems everything from airplay, videos and perhaps even buying bananas count towards chart positions! It peaked at No.52 in the UK ‘selling’ 95,000 copies to date and No.16 on the sales chart – thus equalling the chart positions of “Word Is Out” and “Where Is The Feeling?”. Strange that it wasn’t released in America where No.1 number fifteen was certainly guaranteed and even more so in South America and Cuba, where the second video was filmed.
The title track was released as a kind-of single at the end of May, accompanied by a video that was filmed by Sophie Muller at the same time as “Stop Me From Falling”. Although it served merely as a radio and album promo track, the video has gained over one million YouTube views.
Even poorer promoted was the next ‘single’, “A Lifetime To Repair”, in August. Again used for radio and album promotion, it was treated to a lyric video, which has just 400,000 YouTube views to date, and nothing more.
Money and promotion was, however, thrown at the fifth and final single, the duet, “Music’s Too Sad Without You”. It did receive a proper release and made No.17 on the UK single sales chart, her third top twenty hit of the year and has sold 45,000 copies there so far. The song was heavily promoted on UK TV in November with key appearances on Jonathan Ross’ show and Michael Macintyre’s Saturday night festival, boosting both single and album sales at a time when perhaps things were beginning to come to a natural end. The video has just over 1.5 million YouTube views.
So then what of “Golden” itself? Well making number one in the UK, Australia and Ireland hardly spells disaster. Neither does a top ten chart high in a further ten countries or a No.4 placing on the US independent chart lead anyone to believe that “Golden” has been a flop with fans the world over. In an age of listening and accessing music from many different portals, it seems “Golden” has stood up to everything around it and some. Firstly, the album has out performed “Kiss Me Once” in virtually every country known to mankind. 160,000 copies sold in the UK and 25,000 in Australia compared with 90,000 UK sales and 25,000 Australian for “Kiss Me Once”, and a worldwide sale of 400,000 against 300,000 for “KMO”, prove that fans were much warmer to “Golden” – or was it because there was an actual and decent marketing campaign this time around…?(!)
The Golden Tour has now finished after five months on the road and 33 performances, and with some box office data still to come, it too has proven a much bigger success than the “Kiss Me Once” supporting tour. But then again that wasn’t too hard to do! With around 85% of the 250,000 tickets available sold and, based on figures available, a gross of $12.8m so far, both bums-on-seats and takings have been much higher than the aforementioned tour.
Perhaps BMG, with its limited resources, have erred on the side of caution with the whole “Golden” project, with its minimalistic tour sets, should be seen as a triumphant return to form for Kylie and must of made all concerened shed loads of money and publicity. Whilst perhaps not pleasing all her fans who crave Fever2 or Light Years2, “Golden” has put things back on track for Kylie and, hopefully, will allow more to be spent on the next project and produce even bigger and better figures, while pleasing everyone at the same time! If only…!
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