Last week Michael Jackson dominated the US album charts and he did so again this week with even more album sales than the week before.

Last week he had the top three selling albums. This week he had just the top two selling albums but he actually sold more copies overall this week than last. In all more than 800K copies of his solo albums were sold in the US for the week of June 29 (Monday) through July 5 (Sunday.) He sold 422K the previous week.

He set a record by having all 10 of the top 10 “Pop Catalog” album chart slots. This is a chart for albums that are ineligible for the Billboard 200 because due to certain criteria (basically it’s to keep older albums taking up too many slots on the Billboard 200 chart.)

The MJ “greatest hits” collection Number Ones was the biggest seller of the week with 339K sold, #2 was the legendary 1982 album Thriller with 187K sold. Both of these albums outsold the #1 Billboard 200 album Now 31 which sold 169K. Number Ones (& Thriller) are ineligible for the Billboard 200 #1 ranking despite the fact that they were the biggest sellers due to them being on the “Pop Catalog” chart.

The Top Ten Pop Catalog Albums
(AKA The Top 10 MJ Albums)

#1 Number Ones - 339K - #1 on US comprehensive album chart.
#2 Thriller - 187K - #2
#3 The Essential Michael Jackson - 125K - #5
#4 Off the Wall - 51K - #11
#5 Dangerous - 26K - #21
#6 Bad - 23K - #25
#7 Jackson 5 Ultimate Collection - 10K - #54
#8 MJ Ultimate Collection - 10K - #56
#9 Invincible - 8K - #64
#10 Greatest Hits, History Vol. 1 - 8K - #69

Five of his six solo studio albums are on the list. Only 1995’s HIStory is missing (and it’s actually #96 on the overall album chart, the 11th and final MJ related album on the top 100.) I find it a bit surprising that Off the Wall is selling so much better than Bad & Dangerous. The huge numbers for Thriller are probably not only because it’s his most famous (and generally considered best) album but also because there was a new version of the album (Thriller 25 which includes some new remixes by folks like Kanye West & will.i.am) that came out last year that is heavily stocked in the stores (compared to his other albums.)

Off Topic Tangent

I could go off on a tangent about how much I hate the “Now, That’s What I Call Music” series. Perhaps I will? Why is this necessary? A collection of all of the most overplayed songs on pop radio? Why don’t people who like this crap just turn on the radio then? And the title makes me want to puke.

Check out the “artists” on Vol. 31: Nickelback, Britney Spears, Soulja Boy… I won’t go on. I think you get the idea. It’s like the worst representation of every kind of crap pop music there is.

It’s nice that Thriller outsold this piece of crap this week. It’s sad that Michael Jackson had to die for that to happen.

Buy MJ Albums Online From Amazon’s Bestselling Albums Chart.

Thriller Vinyl LPs On EBay

Michael Jackson

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