Thriller comes within 2,000 units of a 38th week at No. 1, 42 years after its last

A 44-year-old album came within a few thousand sales of the top of the American charts this week.

Michael Jackson’s Thriller climbed 11 places to No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart dated 14 November, the album’s highest rank since it logged its 37th and final week at No. 1 in spring 1984. It earned about 55,000 equivalent album units in the tracking week ending 5 November, up 89% on the week before.

Olivia Rodrigo held it off. Her third album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, rose from No. 2 back to No. 1 with 57,000 units, its fourth week at the top, not in a row. The margin was about 2,000 units, under 4% of Rodrigo’s total.

What pushed a 1982 album this high?

Halloween, and records. The title track and its video are a fixture of every October, and the streams arrived on cue. But the bigger driver was new physical editions. Of Thriller’s roughly 22,000 traditional album sales in the week, about 19,000 were vinyl, its largest vinyl week since Luminate, the data company behind the charts, began tracking sales in 1991.

Forecasts earlier in the week had suggested an even tighter race, with Thriller projected about 4,000 units short. In the end it closed the gap to half that, but not completely.

Is this a good week for Rodrigo?

It is a win with an asterisk. Rodrigo’s 57,000 units is the smallest total for a No. 1 album in more than a year, since SZA’s SOS topped the chart dated 3 May 2025 with 52,000. Her album’s tally fell about 10% week on week; it went back to No. 1 because others fell further.

Still, the album has never left the top five in 21 weeks on the chart. It opened at No. 1 in June with 485,000 units, the biggest debut of her career and the largest opening week by a female artist in 2026, and is her first album to spend its first two weeks at No. 1, something neither Sour nor Guts did.

Who else moved?

K-pop group ILLIT earned its first top 10, debuting at No. 6 with BREAK EVEN on 37,000 units. The group’s previous best was No. 26 in May. The week before, My Chemical Romance had taken The Black Parade reissue to No. 1, the band’s first chart-topper.

What does it say about the charts?

That catalogue albums with devoted fans and collectible vinyl can now compete head-on with new releases in a quiet week. Rodrigo’s No. 1 needed only about 8,100 units a day. A deluxe pressing and a seasonal hit were enough to bring a record from the Reagan era within touching distance.