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Nearly 17 years after his death, Michael Jackson is back on the Billboard charts.
Ever since the release of The King of Pop's biopic Michael last month, Michael Jackson's music has seen a sort of resurgence across streaming platforms. As a result, the legendary artist's biggest hit has re-entered the Billboard Hot 100.
Michael Jackson created no shortage of hits that stand the test of time. "Thriller" turned a music video into a cultural event. "Beat It" crashed rock and pop into each other in a way nobody had done before. "Man in the Mirror" became an anthem. However, Jackson's biggest and most successful hit was "Billie Jean" by a wide margin.
Originally released on Jan. 2, 1983, as the second single from Thriller, "Billie Jean" reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 by March 5 of that year, where it stayed for seven consecutive weeks. During a six-week stretch that spring, Jackson simultaneously held the top spot on all four of Billboard's major pop and R&B charts, becoming the first artist in history to do so.
"Billie Jean" went on to be one of the biggest and best-selling pop hits of all time. Certified Diamond by the RIAA, it has racked up 6.62 million downloads alone and sits at 2.7 billion streams on Spotify. It also won Jackson the Grammy for Best R&B Song, one of 13 he collected over his career.
More than that, "Billie Jean" from even its closest competition is that it has never stopped performing on the charts. Over four decades later, the song remains competitive with newer releases on digital and streaming sales charts. It has spent 43 weeks on the R&B Digital Song Sales chart.
Following the release of Michael, a number of Michael Jackson songs have seen a streaming surge over the past couple of weeks, but it makes sense that the biggest gainer would be his biggest song of all time.
43 years after its initial release, "Billie Jean" has re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 and climbed all the way to No. 17 on the charts, topping songs like "Opalite" by Taylor Swift and "Yukon" by Justin Bieber.
The song has been dominating the Spotify charts, as well, as it currently sits as the No. 2 most-streamed song across the globe, behind only Justin Bieber's "Beauty and a Beat," which saw a resurgence following his Coachella performance last month.
Needless to say, it's clear that Michael Jackson remains the King of Pop, even decades after some of his songs were released.
