Success
When Intensive Care was released in October 2005, it became a smash hit around the world, hitting number-one in the United Kingdom, selling 373,832 copies in its first week, as well as topping charts in twenty other counties including Argentina, Australia, Austria, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, New Zealand and many other countries. Following the success of the album, Williams won the MTV Europe Music Award for 'Best Male', and also entered The Guinness Book of World Records for selling 1.6 million tickets in a single day for his 2006 world tour. The album became the best selling album in Europe by the end of 2005, with sales of over four million copies. However, it only managed to become the third best selling album in the United Kingdom that year. Williams kicked off his Close Encounters World Tour in South Africa in April 2006 in promotion of the album. More than 2.5 million attended the early stages of the tour, with nearly three million having been reported to have seen one or more shows. In January 2007, it was revealed Intensive Care had sold over 5 million copies in Europe, and as such, was certified 5× Platinum by the IFPI. It was also certified 5× Platinum in the United Kingdom around the same time. In Mexico, the album was certified platinum shortly after its release, for shipping 150,000 copies of the physical album, and in December 2008 the album was certified 2× diamond for pre-loaded digital sales of 1,000,000 copies. By shipping 1,100,000 copies and reaching 11× gold, Intensive Care became the eighth best-selling album of the decade in Germany. It also became Williams' fifth album to reach a position in the top twenty of the best-selling album of the decade, with Swing When You're Winning, Escapology, Live at Knebworth and Greatest Hits also earning places. According to EMI, the album has sold 6.2 million copies worldwide.
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Famous quotes containing the word success:
“By his very success in inventing labor-saving devices, modern man has manufactured an abyss of boredom that only the privileged classes in earlier civilizations have ever fathomed.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“All of the valuable qualities ... like helping in the development of others—will not get you to the top at General Motors, were that path open to women.... The characteristics most highly developed in women and perhaps most essential to human beings are the very characteristics that are specifically dysfunctional for success in the world as it is.... They may, however, be the important ones for making the world different.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)
“We live in a system of approximations. Every end is prospective of some other end, which is also temporary; a round and final success nowhere. We are encamped in nature, not domesticated.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)