Michael Jackson Now Has a Billboard 200 Top 10 Album In Each Decade Since the ‘70s — Who Else Does?

On the new Billboard 200 albums chart (dated May 16), Michael Jackson‘s Number Ones ascends seven spots to No. 6, becoming his 11th top 10 and his first new top 10 of the 2020s.

In turn, Jackson becomes only the fifth act with at least one new top 10 album in every decade from the 1970s onwards. He joins Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen and James Taylor as the only acts with new top 10 albums in the 1970s, ’80s, ’90s, 2000s, ’10s and ’20s.

Number Ones was first released in 2003 and jumps into the top 10 on the latest chart following the continued buzz generated by the Jackson biopic Michael. The film premiered in United States movie theaters on April 24 and had grossed more than $240 million in the U.S. and Canada through May 10, making it the top-grossing music biopic of all time, surpassing Bohemian Rhapsody (not adjusted for inflation).

Number Ones joins Jackson’s former No. 1 Thriller in the top 10 of the new Billboard 200, as it rises 7-5 — its first week in the top five since May 1984. Thriller spent 37 weeks at No. 1 in 1983-84, the most weeks at No. 1 for an album by a singular artist.

Here’s a rundown of Jackson’s 11 top 10s, by decade. Jackson notched two new top 10s in the ’70s (first with Ben peaking at No. 5 in 1972 and then Off the Wall, which reached the top 10 in September 1979 and peaked at No. 3 in February 1980), two in the ‘80s (Thriller, No. 1 for 37 weeks in 1983-84 as noted above, and Bad, No. 1 for six weeks in 1987), two in the ‘90s (Dangerous, No. 1 for four weeks in 1991-92, and HIStory: Past, Present and Future Book 1, No. 1 for two weeks in 1995), two in the 2000s (Invincible, No. 1 for one week in 2001, and his first posthumous top 10, the soundtrack to Michael Jackson’s This Is It, No. 1 for one week in 2009), two in the ‘10s (Michael, No. 3 in 2011, and Xscape, No. 2 in 2014) and now one in the ‘20s with Number Ones.

The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units, compiled by Luminate. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 2,500 ad-supported or 1,000 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. The new May 16, 2026-dated chart will be posted in full on Billboard’s website on May 12. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram.