Michael Jackson's Thriller has climbed from No. 13 to No. 2 on the Billboard 200, its highest position on the American albums chart since the spring of 1984, according to Billboard's chart report as reported by AllHipHop and TBS News. The 1982 album earned 55,000 equivalent album units in the United States in the tracking week of 30 October to 5 November, up 89 percent on the previous week, according to Billboard, with data compiled by Luminate. The chart is dated 14 November and posts in full on Billboard's website on 10 November.
The jump gives Thriller its highest rank since the chart dated 14 April 1984, when it spent its 37th and final week at No. 1, according to TBS News. Sales, rather than streaming, drove the surge. The album sold 22,000 copies in the week, up 335 percent, according to Billboard, and 19,000 of those were vinyl copies — the album's biggest vinyl week since Luminate began electronically tracking sales in 1991, and about 86 percent of all its sales that week, according to AllHipHop. Streaming contributed 32,000 equivalent units from 34.34 million on-demand streams, according to ItsBizKit.
The sales spike followed a reissue on 30 October of three new vinyl variants — two colour editions and a liquid-filled pressing — alongside a cassette edition, according to TBS News. The tracking week included Halloween, when the album's title track traditionally returns to heavy rotation, and the new physical editions sent collectors to record shops in numbers the album has not seen in years. It is also Jackson's biggest overall sales week in nearly four years, according to ItsBizKit, and his highest Billboard 200 ranking since the posthumous album Xscape debuted and peaked at No. 2 in May 2014, according to Billboard as reported by Music Times.
Thriller finished the week only around 2,000 equivalent units behind the No. 1 album, Olivia Rodrigo's you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, according to Top40-Charts. Originally released in 1982, Thriller spent 37 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and remains one of the best-selling albums in music history, according to the reports. The photograph with this article is a 1983 press photo of Jackson, from the era of the album's original release, not from the current chart week.
The result is a reminder of how the vinyl revival and seasonal listening can still move a 44-year-old record to the top of the chart. Whether Thriller can go one better and return to No. 1 will depend on next week's sales, but even at No. 2 it has already set a record for the biggest vinyl week of its own long history.