Lambert wrote or co-wrote eight of the album's 16 tracks while working with a host of session musicians and songwriters, as well as guest performers Little Big Town, The Time Jumpers, and Carrie Underwood.

The album features collaborations with Little Big Town ("Smokin' and Drinkin'") and The Time Jumpers ("All That's Left"), as well as a duet with Carrie Underwood on "Somethin' Bad".

[3] It debuted at number one on both the Billboard 200 and Top Country Albums charts while selling 180,000 copies in the United States, becoming the highest first-sales week of Lambert's career.

[21] In a review published by Cuepoint, Robert Christgau hailed Platinum as the year's most daring and consummate big-budget record, featuring "apolitical de facto feminism at its countriest".

[14] The New York Times critic Jon Caramanica found it "vivacious, clever and slickly rowdy", showing Lambert had finally become "a sophisticated radical, a wry country feminist and an artist learning to experiment widely but also with less abrasion".

[18] Spin magazine's Dan Hyman was less enthusiastic, singling out the collaborations on "Smokin' and Drinkin'" and "Something Bad" as contrived appeals to pop audiences on what was an otherwise consistent and carefully crafted record.