With first week's
sales in the United
States totaling 165,805 units, Thriller25 enters the Billboard Top Pop
Catalog chart at #1. (During the past 52 week period, the average first week's
sales for an album hitting #1 on the Top Pop Catalog chart has been 16.6
thousand pieces; Thriller 25 entered
the chart with 10x that number. Because of a technicality in the rules of
Billboard charting, Thriller 25 is
ineligible to chart on the Top 200.
Based on first week's sales, Thriller 25, if eligible, would have
entered the Top 200 at #2, nestled between Jack Johnson at #1 and Amy Winehouse
at #3.)
Michael Jackson's
iconic music film for "Thriller" is currently the #1 music video download on
iTunes.
With more than
one million copies of Thriller 25
shipped around the world, and re-orders already flooding in, the new edition of
Michael Jackson's classic collection has hit #1 in France; #1 in Belgium; #2 in
Germany; #2 in Australia; #2 in the Netherlands; #2 in Norway (Thriller's highest position ever
in that country); #2 in Sweden; #2 in Switzerland; #3 in the UK; #3 in Denmark;
#3 in New Zealand; #4 in Spain; #5 in Austria; #5 in Ireland; #6 in the Czech
Republic; and #6 in Italy.
Global response
to the release of Thriller 25, the
newly expanded deluxe 25th anniversary edition of Michael Jackson's Thriller, the world's top-selling album
of all-time, reached a fever pitch across the planet with surprise hit singles,
an ongoing 40-episode "ThrillerCast" podcast event, the premiere of the
"Thrillicious" Sobe Life Water ad campaign at the Super Bowl, the presentation
of a Lifetime Achievement Award to Michael Jackson at the NRJ Music Awards at
Cannes and a host of upcoming events and
surprises.
In one of the most innovative aspects of
the Thriller 25 campaign, fans will soon be able to go online and star in
Michael's signature "Thriller" video. Using newly developed technology from
innovative media company Big Stage, fans can create a photo-realistic 3-D
avatars of themselves to be inserted into Michael's role in the classic
clip.
The Michael
Jackson Thriller 25th anniversary
celebration runs throughout 2008 with a multi-faceted global marketing campaign
featuring high-profile television, radio and online events around the world and
the major re-launch of Michael's official website,
www.michaeljackson.com
Originally
released in the US on November 30, 1982 by Epic
Records, Thriller, Michael Jackson's
sixth solo album and second with producer Quincy Jones, first entered the
Billboard Top 200 album chart at #11 in December 1982. The original Thriller went on to
spend an astounding 80 consecutive weeks in the American Top 10, 37 of those at
#1, while making history as the first and only record to be America's
top-selling album two years running (1983 and 1984). Thriller has been certified 27x
platinum by the RIAA, giving it Double Diamond Award status in the US.
In 1985, the Guinness Book of
Records named Thriller the Best
Selling Album of All Time, an achievement which remains unsurpassed to this
day.
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