BOWIE'S STAR ASCENDING

While most in the music industry are only just awakening from their Christmas comas, legendary U.K. artist David Bowie is busily promoting his new album, Blackstar (stylized as ★), which lands tomorrow (1/8) on his 69th birthday.

The project is helmed by Brits worldwide: licensed to Jason Iley's Sony in Blighty through RCA (led by Colin Barlow) and the U.K.-bred Rob Stringer via Columbia in the U.S., the set follows 2013’s surprise release The Next Day, which sold 94k in its first-week in the U.K., and 85k stateside.

If Blackstar has a chance of giving Bowie his 10th U.K. #1 album, it needs to beat Adele’s 25 (XL/Beggars), which sold 77k to claim its sixth week atop the Official Albums chart last week, and the Elvis blockbuster If I Can Dream (Sony Music CG), which was 6k sales behind Adele.

Promo for Blackstar so far has included the 11/20 release of its epic 10-minute title track, which featured as the opening music for TV series The Last Panthers. “Lazarus” was premiered on Steve Lamacq’s BBC Radio 6 Music show on 12/17 and available to download that same day. Its haunting video was released today; see for yourself…