That’s The Spirit: Porter Goes Platinum
Nearly three years after its first chart appearance in the UK, Gregory Porter‘s breakthrough album there, Liquid Spirit, has gone platinum. The award is for sales, equivalent streams and downloads of 300,000 copies, and arrives with the record still inside the Official Charts Company’s weekly top 100 chart.
The rise of Liquid Spirit to platinum status is the quintessential slow-burn, word-of-mouth success story. The album was released by Blue Note in early September, 2013 and made its first UK chart appearance at No. 40, but disappeared from the countdown after just one week.
It returned to the top 100 for five more weeks in early 2014, by which time it was winning Best Jazz Vocal Album at the Grammy Awards and winning considerable UK media support, especially at BBC Radio 2. The album returned to the UK chart in March, staying in the top 100 for most of the rest of the year and making its first appearance in the top 20 in June.
Remarkably, Liquid Spirit didn’t hit the top ten for the first time until February 2015, and reached its peak position to date of No. 9 soon afterwards. It stands at No. 97 on this week’s OCC list, its 92nd week on the chart, while Porter’s follow-up Take Me To The Alley is at No. 29, in its tenth week, having debuted at No. 5 in May.
Listen to Liquid Spirit on Spotify
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