David Bowie's The Next Day has achieved the highest first-week sales of the year so far after selling nearly 80,000 copies in the UK in four days.

The RCA album, his first studio set since 2003's Reality, overtook on Thursday the opening week tally of Warner Bros act Biffy Clyro's Opposites, which sold 71,584 copies at the end of January/beginning of February, according to the Official Charts Company. Until Bowie's album tally, this was the biggest first-week sales of 2013 ...