Olivia Rodrigo is back on top of the Billboard 200, fending off a Halloween surge from Michael Jackson’s Thriller by just 2,000 units.
Her third studio album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, released June 12, jumps 2-1 on the chart dated Nov. 14 for a fourth nonconsecutive week at No. 1. Billboard reports that the record opened atop the June 27-dated list and has yet to leave the top five across 21 weeks on the chart.
In the tracking week ending Nov. 5, it earned 57,000 equivalent album units in the United States (down 10%), according to Luminate. Streaming made up 49,500 of those units, or 53.33 million on-demand official streams of the album’s tracks, enough to hold No. 1 on Top Streaming Albums for a seventh total week. Album sales added another 7,500.
It is the smallest total for a Billboard 200 No. 1 in more than a year, since SZA’s SOS led the May 3, 2025-dated chart with 52,000 units. Both of Rodrigo’s earlier studio albums, Sour and Guts, also debuted at No. 1, so this fourth week is less a surprise coronation than proof the third record has the kind of staying power the modern chart rarely grants.
Right behind her, Thriller vaults 13-2, its highest Billboard 200 rank since the spring of 1984, when the album spent its 37th and final week at No. 1 on the April 14-dated list. Billboard notes that the 1982 set still holds the record for the most weeks at No. 1 for an album by a singular artist, behind only the West Side Story soundtrack’s 54 weeks in 1962-63. It has sat in the top 20 every week since early May, including 15 consecutive weeks in the top 10 through August that Billboard ties to the biopic Michael.
In the tracking week of Oct. 30 through Nov. 5, which included Halloween, Thriller earned 55,000 units (up 89%). Billboard credits seasonal streams of the title track, plus new physical editions released on Oct. 30: three vinyl variants (two color editions and a liquid-filled version) and a cassette.
Sales jumped 335% to 22,000, the album’s biggest sales week in nearly four years, and vinyl accounted for 19,000 of those copies, its strongest week on wax since Luminate began electronically tracking sales in 1991. Streaming contributed 32,000 units, or 34.34 million on-demand official streams.
The near miss says as much about how the chart works now as it does about either album. Rodrigo is winning on streams with a 2026 record that has lived in the top five since June; Jackson came within shouting distance because Halloween still sends people back to “Thriller,” and because a fresh run of vinyl can turn catalog into a genuine rival.
A chart that can be swung by seasonal listening and reissue variants is not broken. It is just honest about how people actually hear music once October arrives.
