david bowie

With Blackstar, David Bowie Finally Gets His First No. 1 Album in the U.S.

2010 CFDA Fashion Awards - Arrivals
Photo: Andrew H. Walker/ Getty Images

Nearly 50 years after his first debut, and a week after his death, David Bowie has finally gotten a No. 1 album. Billboard reports that the rock star’s last album, Blackstar, has debuted at No. 1 on its Billboard 200 chart, ending Adele’s seven-week run at the top with 25. According to Billboard’s metrics, Blackstar earned 181,000 equivalent album units, 174,000 of which were pure album sales (Billboard now counts streaming metrics in the total count). This was more than double Bowie’s last sales high: 85,000 albums in the first week with the 2013 release of The Next Day. Additionally, nine other Bowie albums entered the Billboard 200, and two made it to the top 40: Best of Bowie landed at No. 4 and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars at No. 21. The success of Blackstar and Best of Bowie puts the star in the rare position of having two albums in the Top Four, which hasn’t happened since Adele’s 21 and 19 landed at No. 1 and No. 4 in February 2012. David Bowie recently broke Vevo’s single-day streaming record with his video for “Lazarus,†while Blackstar also topped the U.K. charts this week.

David Bowie Gets His First No. 1 Album