These are the No. 1 Albums That Denied the Most Runners-Up
(January 23, 2026) – The 1962 soundtrack to West Side Story (with 54 weeks) and Michael Jackson’s 1982 epic Thriller (37 weeks) are still the two longest-leading No. 1 albums since Billboard began tracking album sales on a weekly basis in 1956.
Tied for third place are Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 juggernaut Rumours, Harry Belafonte’s 1956 classic Calypso and the 1958 South Pacific soundtrack, all of which led for 31 weeks apiece during their historic runs. These giants ruled long — but surprisingly, they weren’t the biggest No. 2 blockers.
That honor belongs to an album released this century, one that led the list for 24 weeks and kept 15 — yep, fifteen! — different No. 2 albums from ever reaching the top spot. Keep reading to see the blog’s breakdown of blockbuster No. 1 LPs and which one was the greatest “album slayer” of them all!
Background
For the purpose of this article, DJROBBLOG is defining “blockbuster” as any album that spent twelve or more weeks at No. 1 — a mark achieved this month by Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl. That album’s reign apparently ended last week when country star Zach Bryan’s latest LP, With Heaven on Top, took over the top. But Showgirl held court during its reign over two runner-up albums that failed to advance to No. 1: Summer Walker’s Finally Over It and Bing Crosby’s perennial holiday favorite Ultimate Christmas, which jumped to a new No. 2 peak during the holidays.
With that observation, this blogger revved up the research engine to determine which blockbusters have fended off the most challengers that never advanced beyond their No. 2 peaks. The research also revealed a handful of blockbuster No. 1 albums whose entire reigns were spent presiding over LPs in the No. 2 slot that either had been or would be No. 1s themselves, including one popular album that spent all 24 of its weeks at No. 1 fending off past or future No. 1 LPs in the runner-up position! Using this article’s premise, that might qualify it as the weakest album slayer — or the strongest depending on one’s perspective.
Overall, there have been 46 albums in Billboard 200 chart history that qualify as blockbusters, and here are the strongest and weakest album slayers of them all!
The Greatest Album Slayer Is…
The album that swatted away the most No. 2 peaking LPs was Adele’s 21. During its 24-week reign (non-consecutively between 2011-12), it presided over 15 different No. 2 albums that never saw the penthouse. They were a mostly forgettable bunch that included the following:
| No. 2-peaking LPs behind Adele’s 21 | Artist |
| Late Nights & Early Mornings | Marsha Ambrosius |
| Endgame | Rise Against |
| Glee, The Music Presents: The Warblers Original Soundtrack | Various |
| Hot Sauce Committee Part Two | Beastie Boys |
| Now 38 | Various |
| Holding Onto Strings Better Left To Fray | Seether |
| Kidz Bop 20 | Kidz Bop Kids |
| Come to the Well | Casting Crowns |
| Give Us Rest Or (A Requiem Mass in C [The Happiest of All Keys]) | David Crowder Band |
| Kidz Bop 21 | Kidz Bop Kids |
| Emotional Traffic | Tim McGraw |
| Born to Die | Lana Del Rey |
| A Different Kind of Truth | Van Halen |
| Whitney: The Greatest Hits | Whitney Houston |
| Thirty Miles West | Alan Jackson |
That’s a long list of challengers that the “Hello” singer’s 21 kept at bay. The strongest among them was Whitney Houston’s greatest hits collection, which climbed to its No. 2 high for three weeks beginning in March 2012 following her tragic death on the eve of that year’s Grammy Awards ceremony. The problem for Houston’s album was that it couldn’t get past the Grammy darling Adele, whose 21 racked up six awards, propelling it to far higher sales plateaus that even Houston’s sudden passing and the resultant fan demand couldn’t overcome.
The album that fought off the second-most No. 2 peaking challengers is Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time, which slayed twelve different No. 2 LPs during its 19-week reign in 2023-24. These were the twelve albums Wallen’s blockbuster relegated to permanent runner-up status:
| No. 2-peaking LPs behind Wallen’s One Thing at a Time | Artist |
| Ready to Be: 12th Mini Album EP | TWICE |
| Face EP | JIMIN |
| Portals | Melanie Martinez |
| Hope | NF |
| 72 Seasons | Metallica |
| D-Day | Agust D |
| 10th Mini Album: F M L EP | SEVENTEEN |
| – | Ed Sheeran |
| The Show | Niall Horan |
| The World EP.2: Outlaw | Ateez |
| Business is Business | Young Thug |
| Stick Season | Noah Kahan |
Notice the five K-Pop albums? How many on this list do you still listen to?
It’s not surprising that long-running No. 1 albums this century have seen more challengers to their thrones than their 20th century counterparts, considering how frequently albums make high-impact debuts and then fall quickly in the streaming and download era. Plus Billboard’s point-of-sale technology — used for the album charts since mid-1991 — means a faster turnaround at the top than in decades prior. If a blockbuster album happens to dominate for a long time — like Adele’s 21 or Wallen’s One Thing at a Time — then it’s likely that more albums will move in and out of the runner-up spot beneath it, sealing their No. 2 fates in the process.
Conversely, the 1980s saw a large number of blockbusters that presided over longstanding No. 2 albums or albums that had been No. 1 but seemingly hung around forever.
The Flip Side…
As teased earlier, there were several blockbuster albums that never reigned over a No. 2-peaking album. All the runners-up beneath them had either previously hit the top spot or would eventually. Here’s that list of blockbusters, arranged in descending order by the number of weeks the album spent at No. 1, with the fellow No. 1 albums that ranked in the runner-up position during the album’s reign included. (OST = Original Soundtrack)
| No. 1 Blockbuster LP | Wks at No. 1 | # Runners-Up That Also hit No. 1: Title (Artist) |
| Purple Rain – OST: Prince & the Revolution | 24 | 3: Sports (Huey Lewis & the News), Born In The USA (Bruce Springsteen), Like a Virgin (Madonna) |
| Dirty Dancing – OST | 18 | 3: Bad (Jackson), Tunnel of Love (Springsteen), Faith (George Michael) |
| Synchronicity – The Police | 17 | 3: Flashdance (OST), Thriller (Jackson), Metal Health (Quiet Riot) |
| Hi Infidelity – REO Speedwagon | 15 | 3: Double Fantasy (John & Yoko Ono Lennon), Paradise Theatre (Styx), Mistaken Identity (Kim Carnes) |
| The Sound of Music – Original Cast | 15 | 2: Here We Go Again! (Kingston Trio), Persuasive Percussion (Terry Snyder & the All Stars) |
| Whitney Houston | 14 | 4: Promise (Sade), Heart (Heart), 5150 (Van Halen), Winner in You (Patti LaBelle) |
| The Music Man – Original Cast | 12 | 4: My Fair Lady (Original Cast), Come Fly With Me (Frank Sinatra), Johnny’s Greatest Hits (Johnny Mathis), South Pacific (Cast) |
| Breakfast at Tiffany’s (OST) – Harry Mancini | 12 | 2: Blue Hawaii (Elvis Presley), West Side Story (OST) |
| Jagged Little Pill – Alanis Morissette | 12 | 7: Dangerous Minds (OST), Waiting to Exhale (OST), All Eyez on Me (2Pac), Falling Into You (Celine Dion), Anthology 2 (Beatles), The Score (Fugees), It Was Written (Nas) |
Thus, Prince’s Purple Rain — a 24-week No. 1 like Adele’s 21 — has the distinction of presiding the longest over nothing but other No. 1 albums.
Meanwhile, Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill, whose 12 nonconsecutive No. 1 weeks spanned fifteen months between 1995-96, is the blockbuster No. 1 album that presided exclusively over the most other No. 1 albums with seven.
And for those of you wondering where history-makers like West Side Story, Thriller, Rumours, South Pacific, The Bodyguard, Saturday Night Fever, Tapestry and others fall on this list, see the table below.
| No. 1 Blockbuster | Wks at No. 1 (peak years) | # of albums held to No. 2 peaks (Title – artist) |
| West Side Story – OST | 54 (1962-63) | 5 (The Music Man – OST; Peter, Paul & Mary – P, P & M; Moving – P, P & M; Songs I Sing on the Jackie Gleason Show – Frank Fontaine; Lawrence of Arabia – OST) |
| Thriller – Jackson | 37 (1983-84) | 5 (Built for Speed – Stray Cats; Frontiers – Journey; Pyromania – Def Leppard; Colour by Numbers – Culture Club; 1984 – Van Halen) |
| Rumours – Fleetwood Mac | 31 (1977-78) | 6 (The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl; Book of Dreams – Steve Miller Band; I’m in You – Peter Frampton; CSN – Crosby, Stills & Nash; Star Wars OST; Footloose & Fancy Free – Rod Stewart) |
| South Pacific OST | 31 (1958-59) | 5 (Rodgers: Victory at Sea, Vol. II – RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra; Exotica – Martin Denny; No One Cares – Sinatra; Heavenly – Mathis; Kingston Trio at Large – Kingston Trio) |
| Calypso – Harry Belafonte | 31 (1956-57) | 1 (An Evening with Harry Belafonte) |
| Saturday Night Fever – OST/ Bee Gees | 24 (1978) | 5 (Footloose & Fancy Free – Stewart; The Stranger – Billy Joel; Slowhand – Eric Clapton; London Town – Wings; Feels So Good – Chuck Mangione) |
| Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em – M.C. Hammer | 21 (1990) | 5 (I’m Breathless – Madonna; Wilson Phillips – WP; Flesh and Blood – Poison; Listen without Prejudice – George Michael; The Razor’s Edge – AC/DC) |
| The Bodyguard – OST/ Whitney Houston | 20 (1992-93) | 2 (Home for Christmas – Amy Grant; Breathless – Kenny G) |
| Ropin’ the Wind – Garth Brooks | 18 (1991-92) | 3 (Decade of Decadence – Mötley Crüe; Death Certificate – Ice Cube; Too Legit to Quit – Hammer) |
| More of the Monkees – Monkees | 18 (1967) | 3 (Between the Buttons – Rolling Stones; Mamas & the Papas Deliver – M&P’s; I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You – Aretha Franklin) |
| The Tortured Poets Dept. – Taylor Swift | 17 (2024) | 8 (Radical Optimism – Dua Lipa; One of Wun – Gunna; Hit Me Hard and Soft – Billie Eilish; Golden Hour: Part 1 EP – Ateez; The Secret of Us – Gracie Adams; The Great American Bar Scene – Zach Bryan; Vultures 2 – Y$: Kanye West & Ty Dolla $ign; The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Princess – Chappell Roan) |
| Some Gave All – Billy Ray Cyrus | 17 (1992) | 4 (Countdown to Extinction – Megadeth; Ten – Pearl Jam; Bobby – Bobby Brown; Beyond the Season – Garth Brooks) |
| Titanic – OST | 16 (1998) | 3 (Yield – Pearl Jam; Ray of Light – Madonna; One Step At a Time – George Strait) |
| To the Extreme – Vanilla Ice | 16 (1990-91) | 1 (The Immaculate Collection – Madonna) |
| The Wall – Pink Floyd | 15 (1980) | 1 (Damn the Torpedoes – Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers) |
| Tapestry – Carole King | 15 (1971) | 4 (Carpenters – Carpenters; Mud Slide Slim & the Blue Horizon – James Taylor; Ram – Paul & Linda McCartney; Every Good Boy Deserves Favour – Moody Blues) |
| Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – Beatles | 15 (1967) | 1 (The Doors) |
| Songs in the Key of Life – Stevie Wonder | 14 (1976-77) | 4 (Silk Degrees – Boz Scaggs; Spirit – Earth, Wind & Fire; The Song Remains the Same – OST/Led Zeppelin; A Night on the Town – Rod Stewart) |
Which of these is most impressive to you? The fact that Madonna has three No. 2 albums whose eternal runner-up status is owed to blockbuster LPs? Or is it that the only album Harry Belafonte’s marathon 31-week No. 1 Calypso prevented from ultimately topping the chart was his own follow-up, An Evening with Belafonte?
Whichever it is, you can file all of this in the category of useless chart trivia you never knew you wanted to know, but are damn glad you found out… courtesy of DJROBBLOG, of course!
DJRob
DJRob (he/him) is a freelance music blogger from the East Coast who covers R&B, hip-hop, disco, pop, rock and country genres – plus lots of music news and current stuff! You can follow him on Bluesky at @djrobblog.bsky.social, X (formerly Twitter) at @djrobblog, on Facebook or on Meta’s Threads.
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