| Million Seller | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | the Pooh Sticks |
| Cover: | Million Seller.jpg |
| Released: | 1993 |
| Genre: | Alternative rock, pop |
| Label: | Zoo Entertainment/BMG |
| Producer: | Steve Gregory |
| Prev Title: | The Great White Wonder |
| Prev Year: | 1991 |
| Next Title: | Optimistic Fool |
| Next Year: | 1995 |
Million Seller is an album by the Welsh band the Pooh Sticks, released in 1993.[1] [2] The album was a commercial disappointment, and the band was dropped by Zoo Entertainment after its release.[3]
The album's first single was "The World Is Turning On".[4]
Million Seller was produced by Steve Gregory, with some assistance from Jim Rondinelli.[5] The album cover depicts frontman Hue Williams floating on a 45 of Elvis Costello's "Accidents Will Happen". As on previous albums, the Pooh Sticks incorporated titles, lyrics, and melodies to popular songs in to Million Sellers 13 tracks.[6] [7]
The Washington Post deemed the album "hopelessly arch, impossibly infectious pop-punk."[8] Trouser Press wrote that, "with [Amelia] Fletcher’s voice sweetly balancing Hue’s, 'Let the Good Times Roll' and 'The World Is Turning On' are fabulous confections, candy-pop mountains of ABBA-rock production and witty/silly lyrics."[9] Robert Christgau considered the album to be "irony-pop gone hermeneutic—with nothing to say." The State likened it to "a '90s version of Sgt. Pepper or Atom Heart Mother."[10]
Spin called the album "a desperately hummable, anxiously erotic masterpiece from a band with enough heart to make your head spin."[11] Stereo Review noted that "these Brit youngsters—rigorous pop formalists with a cutesy streak more than a mile wide—apparently see themselves as the missing link between Neil Young and Edison Lighthouse... Few less auspicious concepts have ever been digitally preserved."[12] The Village Voice labeled Million Seller "Carole King's Tapestry done by self-conscious sugarpop punks trying to rock and roll their way out of self-consciousness."[13]
AllMusic called it "truly a classic pop record," writing: "Too polished and produced to garner alternative credibility, yet not the kind of record destined to get any mainstream exposure, Million Seller slipped between the cracks."