Why Did Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ Hit the Hot 100’s Top 10 for the First Time Since 1984?

In March 1984, “Thriller” reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 — becoming the seventh top 10 hit on Michael Jackson‘s blockbuster album of the same name, a then-record on the chart. On this week’s Hot 100 (dated Nov. 15), the song reaches the top 10 again for the first time since that run, bounding 32-10.

The reason for the 40-plus-year-old song flying up the chart is simple: It returns annually around this time of year, having re-charted on the Hot 100 in 11 of the last 13 Halloween seasons (dating back to 2013), and in every such season since 2018. With its spooky production, suspenseful lyrics and iconic mini-horror movie music video, “Thriller” has become an obvious Halloween soundtrack staple, with its radio airplay and streams spiking every late October (often bleeding into early November) as a result.

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But before this year, the song had never re-charted higher than No. 19 — where it landed on the Hot 100 in 2021, followed by three straight years re-charting somewhere in the 20s. So if it made the top 10 this year, that must mean the song received an even bigger bump in streaming and sales than usual, right?

Not exactly. In its biggest 2024 week of Halloween-boosted performance (the tracking week ending Oct. 31), “Thriller” racked up 17 million official U.S. streams, according to Luminate — its highest weekly tally of the 2020s — along with 5,000 in digital song sales. This year, “Thriller” amassed 14 million streams in its biggest week (for the week ending Nov. 6, as reflected on the latest Hot 100), with 3,000 in sales.

The simplest explanation for the downtick isn’t that “Thriller” suddenly got less popular: It’s more likely just a matter of timing. In 2024, the tracking week (which always runs from Friday to Thursday) ended with Halloween that Thursday — which means that “Thriller” got to count consumption from both Halloween night and the six days of build-up to it, when Halloween songs are usually already heating up.

This year, with Halloween on a Friday, that build-up was all counted towards the prior tracking week (Oct. 24-30), with the song’s daily streams and sales dropping off immediately following Halloween night, and all but returning to usual levels following Halloween weekend. You can see the disparity for “Thriller” in the respective weeks immediately prior to its biggest week of the year: In 2024, it earned 17 million streams the week of Halloween, but only 5.8 million the week before; for 2025, it earned 14 million streams during Halloween week but 8.9 million the week before. (Combine the two weeks into one overall Halloween season and “Thriller” is close to even in streaming year-over-year.)

So how do we explain the chart jump in 2025? It seemingly has less to do with “Thriller” than with the competition it’s facing. With Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl songs receding from their spectacular streaming debuts a month earlier, and few new hits speeding in to replace them, the top streaming (and selling) songs are performing at a lower rate than they were the past two years at this point in the calendar.

This week, “Thriller” ranks sixth on our Streaming Songs chart and fifth on Digital Song Sales, with 14 million streams and 3,000 in sales. In both 2023 and 2024, those numbers would not have been strong enough to make the top 10 of either chart.

Also helping with the “Thriller” bump: With Billboard updating its rules in October for songs on the chart going recurrent, several long-lasting songs that might have otherwise been in its way in the Hot 100’s top tiers — including Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” and Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With a Smile” — have since been deemed ineligible for the latest list.

So with fewer songs performing at a particularly high level in streams or sales, and a handful of those songs no longer eligible to chart anyway, there’s simply more room for revived hits like “Thriller” to zoom toward the top of the chart. And it’s not the only song taking advantage of the extra opportunity: A little lower on the Hot 100, fellow Halloween perennials from Bobby “Boris” Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers (“Monster Mash,” No. 21), Ray Parker Jr. (“Ghostbusters,” No. 22) and Rockwell (“Somebody’s Watching Me,” No. 24) all also make the chart’s top 25 for the first time in the streaming era.

It’s also worth pointing out that while the competition from brand-new releases was minimal for Halloween songs on this week’s Hot 100 — the highest debut on the chart comes at No. 93 (Yeat’s “Come n Go”), though a couple Christmas songs also make an early reappearance in the 30s and 40s — it was more formidable the past couple spooky seasons. Indeed, “Thriller” and its ilk might have threatened similar streaming-era chart peaks to their performances this year if not for the release of Tyler, the Creator’s Chromakopia before the Hot 100 dated Nov. 9 in 2024, or (again) Taylor Swift, with 1989 (Taylor’s Version) right before the Hot 100 dated Nov. 11 in 2023 — both of which charted numerous songs across the top 20.

Will this trend continue, with “Thriller” and its Halloween cohorts continuing to scale higher and higher on the Hot 100 until one day potentially competing for the No. 1 — like Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” and its Christmas compatriots do annually around the holiday season? Possibly, but the answer to that may lie more with the performance of the rest of the non-holiday music industry than with “Thriller” and friends themselves.