Forty-four years after it first ruled the charts, Michael Jackson’s Thriller is back near the top — and it came within 2,000 units of No. 1.

The 1982 classic vaulted to No. 2 on the Billboard 200 (chart dated Nov. 14), its highest rank since the spring of 1984, when it logged its 37th and final week at No. 1. In the tracking week ending Nov. 5 — Halloween week — Thriller earned about 55,000 equivalent album units in the U.S., an 89% jump, according to Billboard.

Olivia Rodrigo’s you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love held the top spot with 57,000 units, edging Jackson out by the slimmest of margins.

The Halloween effect did the heavy lifting: the title track stormed to No. 1 on Apple Music US and topped Spotify’s Global chart for the first time, pulling 6.606 million streams on Oct. 31 alone. The song also re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 20.

It’s the capper on a huge year for Jackson’s catalog. The album has sat in the Top 20 every week since early May, including 15 straight weeks in the Top 10 through August — a run Billboard ties to the blockbuster biopic Michael — and Sony recently revealed his catalog amassed more than 3 billion streams within Spotify’s Global Top 200 during the first nine months of 2026.

For Toledo listeners who grew up moonwalking in their living rooms, the message is clear: Thriller never really left. It just waits for Halloween.

Sources: That Grape Juice, Midder Music

Image: Zoran Veselinovic via Wikimedia Commons — Michael Jackson performing in Vienna, June 1988.