Once again, Taylor Swift tops this week's Billboard albums and singles charts. Elsewhere, two holidays collide, as Halloween perennials coexist with the charts' first flurries of the Christmas season. Along the way, Michael Jackson's "Thriller" shoots up the chart, making this the sixth consecutive decade in which Jackson has scored at least one top 10 hit. That's an all-time chart record.
TOP STORY
Before the streaming era, holidays rarely had much of an impact on Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart. You'd see an occasional novelty hit here and there, but generally speaking, the Hot 100 in December didn't look all that different from the Hot 100 in, say, March.
The streaming era has changed that radically — and in ways that extend well beyond Christmas time. Just this year, Toby Keith's 35 Biggest Hits compilation zoomed back into the top 10 in the aftermath of July 4. Earth, Wind & Fire's Greatest Hits re-entered the Billboard 200 albums chart because so many fans like to stream the group's 1978 song "September" — with its famous question, "Do you remember the 21st night of September?" — on Sept. 21.
And Halloween? Well, Halloween has become a musical season unto itself — for at least a few weeks, anyway.
Last week's charts reflect the seven days immediately before Halloween — the "spooky season," you might say, but not the holiday itself or the weekend that followed. And several titles did re-enter the charts, led by Michael Jackson's "Thriller," which resurfaced on the Hot 100 at No. 32.
This week's charts cover a seven-day stretch beginning with Halloween, so you get a full reflection of costume-party playlists and titles streamed on front porches for the benefit of trick-or-treaters. And, though it can't compare to the annual pre-Christmas onslaught, a handful of spooky and spookiness-adjacent songs do make their way back onto the Hot 100 this week.
The songs themselves are more or less exactly what you'd expect: Bobby "Boris" Pickett & The Crypt-Kickers' "Monster Mash" (No. 21), Ray Parker Jr.'s "Ghostbusters" (No. 22) and Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me" (No. 24) all reemerge from their respective crypts in lockstep, with The Citizens of Halloween's "This Is Halloween" (from Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas) right behind them.
But one Halloween jam outshines them all — and hits some massive milestones in the process.
"Thriller" was the seventh single from Jackson's 1982 mega-blockbuster of the same name and hit No. 4 during its initial chart run. It became a durable classic — and Halloween staple — thanks to its iconic video, which premiered in December 1983.
"Thriller" has re-entered the Hot 100 numerous times since then, most prominently in the aftermath of Jackson's death in 2009. This week, it jumps from No. 32 all the way to No. 10.
For Jackson, that triggers a remarkable chart milestone: He's the first artist in history to hit the top 10 in six different decades. Before, he was tied with … who, The Beatles? Nope. Elvis Presley? Nuh-uh. The answer is Andy Williams, who had loads of hits in the '50s, '60s and '70s, then returned to the top 10 in the 2010s and 2020s thanks to the streaming-fueled holiday hit "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year."
In Jackson's case, his six decades have been consecutive — and there's even a seventh with an asterisk, because The Jackson 5 cracked the top 10 with "I Want You Back" in December 1969. Prior to this week's "Thriller" renaissance, Jackson's last appearance in the top 10 arrived thanks to his posthumous appearance in Drake's 2018 hit "Don't Matter to Me."
Don't expect "Thriller" to remain in the top 10 now that Halloween is an increasingly distant memory. The spooky season is well and truly over, provided you don't look too closely at the Hot 100 and grimace in terror as you spy the song at No. 31.
It's Mariah Carey, who reenters the chart — earlier than ever — with "All I Want for Christmas Is You." Eeeeeeeeeeeek!
TOP ALBUMS
For the fifth straight week, Taylor Swift's The Life of a Showgirl sits atop the Billboard 200 albums chart. But Swift's grip on the top spot would at least appear to be slipping, with several high-profile albums on the immediate horizon.
Though she's yet to hit the Billboard 200's top 10 in her career, Rosalía's LUX is due to hit next week's charts, and has gotten tremendous reviews. (Seriously, it's so great.) Summer Walker's Finally Over It drops this Friday and will enter the Billboard 200 the following week. Michael Bublé's Christmas has — [emits deep, tortured sigh, followed by a three-minute stare, unblinking, into the middle distance] — already reentered the chart at No. 65.
The Life of a Showgirl easily survived this week's top new threat, as Florence + The Machine debuted at No. 4 with a Halloween-friendly new album called Everybody Scream. And a huge chart leap for Tyler, The Creator's CHROMAKOPIA — boosted by the release of deluxe editions surrounding the anniversary of its release — only sent it from No. 117 to No. 5.
Still, for The Life of a Showgirl — and for those of us who toil aggressively to avoid exposure to Bublé's music — winter is coming.
Case in point: There are now four Christmas albums on the Billboard 200. Bublé leads the way, followed by the Vince Guaraldi Trio's A Charlie Brown Christmas (No. 85), Carey's Merry Christmas (No. 113) and Bing Crosby's Ultimate Christmas (No. 160). Whole lotta holiday-music enthusiasts are out there opening their gifts early this year.
TOP SONGS
Taylor Swift is a master of extending her chart runs, thanks to a deep bag of tricks that includes remixes, staggered releases on vinyl and CD, acoustic versions and more. The woman possesses a great many talents, but she's an all-timer when it comes to leveraging her fans' enthusiasm.
On the albums chart, it's a challenge to extend The Life of a Showgirl's run at No. 1, in part because she's already exhausted so many of those opportunities in the album's first week of release. The price of that record-setting sales week is that it gets harder and harder to go back to the well and sell fans more copies of the same album.
But when it comes to "The Fate of Ophelia," which tops the Hot 100 for a fifth straight week, she's still got some bullets in the chamber as she labors to remain ahead of two colossal hits. And she needs them, because the song isn't No. 1 in streaming or radio airplay this week.
The top song on streaming is HUNTR/X's "Golden," from the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack. When it comes to commercial radio airplay, the top song is Alex Warren's "Ordinary," which is likely evident to anyone who's tried to listen to a commercial pop station since, say, June. But the former lags a bit in airplay, the latter lags a bit in streaming and "The Fate of Ophelia" leads the field in sales — an area where Swift's bag of tricks comes in especially handy.
"The Fate of Ophelia" gets a boost this week from two alternate versions: an "Alone in My Tower Acoustic Version" that's padding her streaming and sales numbers, and a brand-new remix by the duo Loud Luxury that dropped on Nov. 6.
Those moves were enough to keep the song atop the Hot 100 for another week, but as the holidays loom, all three songs face a force as predictable as the tides. Today, they're jockeying for the top of the charts; tomorrow, they'll all be eating Paul Anka's dust.
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