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Michael Jackson Lands a Billboard 200 Top 10 Album in Every Decade Since the 1970s
Michael Jackson’s Number Ones rises to No. 6, giving him a Billboard 200 top 10 album in every decade since the 1970s.
Michael Jackson has now scored a top 10 album on the Billboard 200 in every decade from the 1970s through the 2020s.
On the chart dated May 16, Number Ones jumps seven places to No. 6. It becomes Jackson’s 11th top 10 album and his first new top 10 of the 2020s.
That puts Jackson in a small group. He is now only the fifth act to place at least one new top 10 album on the Billboard 200 in the 1970s, ’80s, ’90s, 2000s, ’10s and ’20s. The others are Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen and James Taylor.
Number Ones, first released in 2003, moved back into the top 10 as interest around the Jackson biopic Michael continued to build. The film opened in U.S. theaters on April 24 and had grossed more than $240 million in the U.S. and Canada through May 10, according to the report cited in the chart story, making it the top-grossing music biopic of all time, ahead of Bohemian Rhapsody before inflation.
Number Ones joins Jackson’s former No. 1 Thriller in the latest Billboard 200 top 10. Thriller rises 7-5, its first week in the top five since May 1984. The album spent 37 weeks at No. 1 in 1983-84, still the most weeks at No. 1 for an album by a solo artist.
Jackson’s 11 top 10 albums break down across the decades like this: two in the ’70s, with Ben peaking at No. 5 in 1972 and Off the Wall reaching the top 10 in September 1979 before peaking at No. 3 in February 1980; two in the ’80s, with Thriller at No. 1 for 37 weeks and Bad at No. 1 for six weeks in 1987; two in the ’90s, with Dangerous at No. 1 for four weeks in 1991-92 and HIStory: Past, Present and Future Book 1 at No. 1 for two weeks in 1995; two in the 2000s, with Invincible at No. 1 for one week in 2001 and the posthumous soundtrack Michael Jackson’s This Is It at No. 1 for one week in 2009; two in the ’10s, with Michael reaching No. 3 in 2011 and Xscape hitting No. 2 in 2014; and now Number Ones in the ’20s.
The Billboard 200 ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. using multi-metric consumption, measured in equivalent album units and compiled by Luminate. Those units include album sales, track equivalent albums and streaming equivalent albums. One unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 2,500 ad-supported or 1,000 paid or subscription on-demand audio and video streams from songs on the album. The new May 16, 2026-dated chart will be posted in full on Billboard’s website on May 12.
