audio tracks; the Japanese release added the B-side "Wood Jackson". In December, Heathen appeared on SACD, featuring a 5.1 surround sound remix of the album, extended versions of four tracks and outtakes. The album's thorough marketing campaign included television appearances, interviews, pre-release "listening events" and in America, a television commercial featuring Bowie and a young girl, described by the former as a "parent-child situation". The campaign and press coverage of the Bowie-hosted Meltdown festival and the 30th anniversary of Ziggy Stardust (1972) led Heathen to become his most anticipated album in several years. Reaching number five on the UK Albums Chart, it matched the performance of Hours and remained on the chart for 20 consecutive weeks, the artist's longest continuous chart presence since Let's Dance (1983). It also reached number 14 on the US Billboard 200, becoming Bowie's highest charting album since Tonight (1984). Across Europe, Heathen reached number one in Denmark, two in Norway, three in France, four in Austria, Belgium Flanders and Germany, and the top ten in Australia, Belgium Wallonia, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Scotland, Sweden and Switzerland. Elsewhere, the album charted in Finland (11), Hungary (18), the Netherlands (19), New Zealand (22), Japan (26), and Spain (27). Critical reception Heathen was Bowie's best-received album in years. Reviewers declared it a return to form and his best work since Scary Monsters. Bowie himself remarked that "It seems to be traditional now that every album since Black Tie White Noise [1993] is the best album I've put out since Scary Monsters. Inevitably, that's what I get. But this one just seems to have caught people's imaginations." On Metacritic, the album has an overage score of 68 out of 100 based on 20 reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews". In The Guardian, Alexis Petridis found a "strident, confident" album "lush with melodies" that "achieves a balance noticeably lacking in Bowie's output of the past 20 years". Although he felt it did not reach the highs of Station to Station, Low or Scary Monsters, he concluded that Heathen is "packed with fantastic songs" and is overall "the sound of a man who has finally worked out how to grow old with a fitting degree of style". Chris Jones of BBC Music found it not a return to form, but rather "a continuation of all the marvelous things we love about [Bowie]." He ultimately called it a "serendipitous release" that "bursts with a