Extraordinary Machine - Reception and Promotion

Reception and Promotion

The official version of Extraordinary Machine attracted universal acclaim according to Metacritic upon its release: it was placed number one on year-end top albums lists in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times and Slant magazine, within the top five in The Village Voice, Blender magazine and Rolling Stone, and in the top ten in the Los Angeles Times and Spin magazine. A minority of publications commented less favorably about the album; Stylus magazine described it as "a rudderless piece of work" and "a bitterly disappointing listen", while the website Pitchfork Media (which placed the leaked version of the album at number forty-six on their "Top 50 Albums of 2005" list) wrote, "The shame of it all is that Apple, after six years of silence, could've made a more definitive, progressive statement rather than something familiar and similar—and we've got the bootlegs to prove it". Extraordinary Machine was nominated for the 2006 Grammy Award for "Best Pop Vocal Album", losing to Kelly Clarkson's Breakaway (see Grammy Awards of 2006).

During mid-August 2005 and ahead of the album's release in October, both "O' Sailor" and "Parting Gift" were made available as a bundle download at the online iTunes Music Store. While "O' Sailor" was released separately at other digital music stores, video promotion for "Parting Gift" began later that month. Extraordinary Machine debuted at number seven on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart with 94,000 copies sold in its first week of release, making it Apple's first top ten album; however, it fell out of the top ten in its second week with a sales decline of almost fifty percent. The video for "O' Sailor" began to receive television airplay in November, and the following January the "Not About Love" video made its internet premiere; early the next month, "Get Him Back" was released to radio stations. None of the singles attracted substantial airplay or digital downloads, and consequently they did not appear on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 or Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart.

As of April 19 the album had sold 462,000 copies in the U.S. according to Nielsen SoundScan,, and, by mid-2012, had sold roughly 600,000 copies Prior to receiving a gold certification from the RIAA in January 2006 for shipments of 500,000 copies, it was nominated for the New Pantheon award, which honours "left of center" albums that shipped less than 500,000 copies in the U.S. between July 2004 and October 2005. Apple went on a three-week U.S. tour from November 22 to December 11 to promote the album, and from January 25 to March 5, 2006 she supported British band Coldplay on the first half of their North American X&Y tour. Apple also appeared on her own headlining summer tour from April 10, 2006 to October 29, 2006, with Damien Rice and Davíd Garza as her supporting acts for the thirty-five shows.