It is a fact cemented in pop culture lore, repeated in obituaries and trivia nights, and etched into the very foundation of music history: Michael Jackson’s Thriller is the bestselling album of all time. The 1982 masterpiece, a perfect storm of pop, rock, and R&B, was a cultural atom bomb, shattering records and redefining the music video. The New York Times, in its 2009 obituary for the singer, even credited the album with a staggering 100 million copies sold. That number is the anchor for his title as the “King of Pop.”

But what if that number, and the title it supports, is built on a foundation of sand?

In the opaque world of music industry accounting, sales figures are a “notoriously a complex subject,” often “exaggerated for public consumption.” The 100 million figure for Thriller has always been, as the video terms it, “particularly outlandish.” Jackson’s own legendary producer, Quincy Jones, couldn’t keep the number straight, citing 100 million copies in one part of his memoir and 120 million just pages later.

This isn’t just a rounding error. It’s the unraveling of the most-cited statistic in music history. And in 2018, the unthinkable happened: a new system of counting officially dethroned the King, in the United States at least. The artist who took his crown? Not Prince, not Madonna, not his own sister Janet. It was The Eagles.

To understand how this happened, you have to first understand that the entire concept of a “bestselling album” is a modern invention, one that Michael Jackson himself helped engineer.

Before Jackson’s rise, the music industry was a different beast. Labels weren’t focused on album sales. The real money was in singles. Artists like The Beatles and Elvis Presley dominated by selling 45s and Greatest Hits collections. In fact, the Jackson 5’s label, Motown, famously refused to have its sales audited by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), meaning there are no official gold or platinum figures for that entire era.

Back then, the actual biggest-selling records weren’t even by pop stars; they were movie soundtracks. The original Broadway cast recording of My Fair Lady held the title in 1963 with 4 million copies, only to be beaten by The Sound of Music at 7 million. It wasn’t until the 1970s that rock albums like Carole King’s Tapestry (10 million) and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors (16 million) began to dominate.

The game changed with Saturday Night Fever. The Bee Gees’ 1977 soundtrack sold 25 million copies, proving that a blockbuster film paired with a perfect pop album could ignite a “global disco craze.” A young Michael Jackson was watching.

When Jackson moved from Motown to Epic, his goal shifted: he wanted to sell albums, not just singles. His 1979 solo debut, Off the Wall, was the first salvo, becoming the bestselling album by a Black artist up to that point. But for his next release, he set his sights on the all-time record. His strategy was revolutionary: create an album where every single track was a potential smash hit. He blended R&B, synth-pop, and even rock, creating a record with true “universal appeal.”

The result was Thriller. And its success wasn’t just left to chance; it was manufactured.

In February 1984, CBS Records spent $250,000 on a lavish industry party at the New York Museum of Natural History. With thousands of fans chanting “We want Michael!” outside, Jackson was saluted on stage, read a congratulatory letter from President Reagan, and presented with a giant gold album and an illuminated globe. This wasn’t just a party; it was a press event, a coronation meticulously designed to cement the album’s status. By the end of 1984, it was reported to have sold 35 million units.

But here is the billion-dollar catch: those 35 million units weren’t 35 million albums bought by customers.

Back in the 1970s and 80s, RIAA certifications for “gold” and “platinum” were not based on sales to the public. They were based on shipments from the label to record stores. It was common practice for an album to get certified platinum (one million units) after shipping, say, 800,000 copies, only to have 200,000 “returned unsold to the label.” Furthermore, the official Billboard charts—the very metric of success—were compiled by “phone surveys of record store employees” just asking what seemed to be selling well.

The entire system was built on soft numbers and estimations. Jackson’s “bestselling album” title was based on this “fuzzy math.”

For decades, no one came close. Jackson’s own follow-up, Bad, became the second bestselling album of all time in 1991, but it never beat Thriller. Jackson, unique from the rock stars before him, “proudly flaunt[ed] his impressive numbers,” tying his King of Pop status directly to his commercial appeal.

Then the rules of the game changed.

In 1991, Nielsen SoundScan was introduced, a system that finally recorded the actual purchases of music at the cash register. Suddenly, genres like country, which had been overlooked by the phone surveys, were revealed to be “ringing up massive sales.” The data was finally getting real.

The second, and more dramatic, change came in 2016. The RIAA agreed to tally digital streams into its album data, at a rate of 1,500 streams equaling one album sale. This new system, combining physical sales, digital sales, and streams, would force a reshuffling of the all-time list.

In August 2018, the RIAA updated its tallies. Michael Jackson’s Thriller was officially unseated. The new U.S. champion: The Eagles’ Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975).

The Eagles’ album was certified at a staggering 38 times platinum, representing 38 million units. Thriller was left behind at 33 million. The two albums had been battling for decades, but the new streaming-inclusive formula, combined with a controversial audit, pushed the Eagles over the top.

This is where the story gets contentious. The Eagles’ sales figure jumped from 29 million in 2006 to 38 million in 2018. Warner Music, their distributor, claimed the new number came from “newly discovered sales dating back to 1976.”

John Branca, a representative from Michael Jackson’s estate, was blunt. He called the claim “absurd.” Branca noted that sales audits are typically restricted to three years, not 30 or 40. “The notion that they can go back… and find units that were never counted before is absurd,” he stated.

The dethronement raises a deeper, more philosophical question: in today’s fragmented music world, does the title of “bestselling album” even matter?

Some argue that a compilation album like Their Greatest Hits shouldn’t even be in the same category. Thriller was an original “body of work,” a singular cultural moment that defined an era. A greatest-hits package is, by its nature, a collection of previously successful singles.

Furthermore, the “monolithic mass media culture” that created Thriller is “now truly dead.” No musician today, in the age of streaming, is likely to ever experience the kind of unified sales Jackson saw. The entire accolade, some say, is “outdated.” Perhaps the “most streamed album of all time” is the only title that holds any real meaning for modern audiences.

For the Jackson estate, the fight is far from over. John Branca insists that Thriller remains the undisputed global sales leader. “Today, the United States accounts for only 30% of Jackson’s sales,” he said. “When you look at it on a global basis, it’s not even a fair conversation. No album comes close.”

He may be right. But at home, in the very country whose culture he defined, the King has lost his crown—not just to a rock band, but to a new, complicated, and controversial set of numbers. The 100 million-copy myth has been shattered, revealing a far more complex truth about what it means to be number one.