Would it have happened if he hadn’t passed away? We like to think so. But the fact David Bowie’s last album, ‘Blackstar’, has debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, giving the late legend his first chart-topping album in the US a week after his death, has us feeling all fuzzy inside.
Bowie’s millions of fans worldwide have been mourning his passing / celebrating his life by consuming his last body of work – dropped two days before he lost a months-long battle with cancer – with an insatiable hunger, which has stacked up as his biggest sales week for an album since Nielsen Music began tracking point-of-sale music purchases in 1991.
‘Blackstar’ earned 181,000 equivalent album units in the US during the week ending January 14, according to Nielsen; of that amount, 174,000 were in pure album sales, which is massive.
? IN AT #1 ON BILLBOARD 200 CHART“The toppest top of all the tops…”David Bowie’s ? has gone straight in at the top…
Posted by David Bowie on Sunday, January 17, 2016
Nine more of Bowie’s albums have either re-entered or debuted on the Billboard 200 chart, two of them in the top 40 (the greatest hits collection ‘Best of Bowie’ and ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars’, at #4 and #21 respectively).
As we now know – or suspect, with little doubt – ‘Blackstar’ was Bowie’s goodbye to fans, and this seems like an appropriate thank you.
Source: Billboard.
Photo: David Bowie / Lazarus.
