NEW YORK: The final album by David Bowie, released just two days before his death, has soared in sales and looked set Tuesday to top charts around the world.
"Blackstar" is on course to be the first number-one album in the United States for the artistic legend, who lived his last years in New York but enjoyed more mainstream success in his native Britain.
Billboard magazine, which publishes the benchmark US chart, said sales of "Blackstar" were forecast to surpass those of Adele's blockbuster "25," which has spent seven weeks at number one.
Bowie's previous album "The Next Day," which came out in 2013 after he was absent for a decade, rose as far as number two on the US chart.
In Britain, the Official Charts Company said "Blackstar" was on course to top the weekly list and predicted that 13 more of Bowie's albums would re-enter the top 100.
Britain's chart will come out late Friday, while the US list will be released over the weekend.
"Blackstar" led Apple's iTunes download chart for Monday, the day Bowie's death was announced, in virtually every developed country, according to sites that track the data.
Several other Bowie albums suddenly appeared or re-entered near the top of the iTunes charts including "Nothing Has Changed," his career-spanning hits collection released in 2014.
On streaming leader Spotify, "Blackstar" songs as well as classic Bowie hits such as "Heroes," "Under Pressure" with Queen, and "Let's Dance" were rising on charts that look at the past week's most-heard songs, with Bowie's catalog ascending especially quickly in France.
Bowie released "Blackstar" on Friday, his 69th birthday, enjoying widespread acclaim as the British music legend again proved his innovation with a hard jazz sound.
Few people knew at the time that Bowie was dying of cancer and had released "Blackstar" as a final artistic statement, with wistful reflections from one of modern music's most influential figures.
Rough Trade, the taste-making British store that also runs New York's largest record shop, said it would donate all proceeds from sales of Bowie's work in January to cancer research.
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