# What Kind of Best Is Michael Jackson?
> A billion-dollar biopic put Michael Jackson back in cinemas. Fifteen rankings file him under pop, dance, Motown, television and film.
*By YPB Team · Published August 16, 2026 · https://youpick.best/articles/michael-jackson-ranked-many-ways*
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Michael Jackson in 1984, photographed by the White House Photo Office (public domain).
Michael Jackson has been dead for seventeen years and he is currently the most profitable thing in cinemas. *Michael*, Antoine Fuqua's biopic with Jaafar Jackson in the lead, passed a billion dollars worldwide and began streaming on Starz on 10 August 2026, which is why his name is back in circulation this month.1
What that revival runs into is a filing problem. He is a pop singer, a soul singer, a Motown child act, a dancer, a television event and, briefly, a film star, and the lists on this site sort him into every one of those departments separately.
> Michael Jackson survives almost every reclassification the lists throw at him. The exception is the cinema shelf, and that is the one his own comeback is built on.
## Billie Jean vs Smooth Criminal: the song nobody settles
Thirteen songs, one artist, and the field splits immediately.
"Billie Jean" carries the weight of the catalogue: the bassline, the 1983 television performance that made the moonwalk famous, the single that broke MTV's colour barrier. It is the default answer and it has been for four decades.
"Smooth Criminal" is what the disagreement sounds like once somebody starts it. Its 1988 video built the anti-gravity lean, a stage illusion Jackson later patented with two collaborators so it could be performed live.
Behind those two sit "Beat It", "Man in the Mirror" and "Rock with You", each of which would headline a lesser catalogue. Depth is the real story of this list: no other option here is a weak answer.
The easy one first: thirteen of his own songs, and no agreement past the top two. Play it →
## Thriller vs 1989: the pop album shelf, thirty years apart
Move up one level and Jackson stops competing with himself.
*Thriller* is the record every pop album is measured against. It is certified 34 times platinum in the United States, the highest certification any solo artist has reached, though the Eagles' *Their Greatest Hits* sits above it at 38.2
Taylor Swift's *1989* is the modern case for the same crown: five number-one singles and the Album of the Year Grammy, from an artist who rebuilt herself as a pop act to make it.
*Rumours*, *Purple Rain* and *Pet Sounds* sit in the same field, and that is where the question gets awkward. Three of the five biggest names in this category never made a video, and the criteria people use to pick between them are not the criteria that made Jackson famous.
Two of his albums on one list, against Fleetwood Mac, Prince and Taylor Swift. Play it →
## Thriller vs Smells Like Teen Spirit: fourteen minutes against three chords
The video for "Thriller" ran fourteen minutes and was directed by John Landis, who had just made *An American Werewolf in London*. In 2009 the Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry, the first music video ever selected for preservation there.3
Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is the opposite proposition: a pep rally shot in a day, deliberately cheap, and the clip that ended the era Jackson's spending had created.
Both are on a list of eighteen that also holds Beyoncé's "Formation", Sinéad O'Connor's single unbroken close-up and Peter Gabriel's stop-motion "Sledgehammer".
This is the first section where Jackson is one entry among many rather than the subject of the question, and it will not be the last.
Here he is a single entry, up against Nirvana, Sinéad O'Connor and Beyoncé. Play it →
## Thriller vs Bad: the follow-up problem
Ten studio albums, and the interesting fight is for second place.
*Bad* was the 1987 answer to the biggest record ever made, and it produced five consecutive US number ones, a feat no album had managed before. On paper that is a career; here it is the runner-up.
*Off the Wall* has the specialist case. Quincy Jones produced it, it launched Jackson as an adult solo artist in 1979, and its supporters hear the album that followed as the commercial version of the same idea.
Then the list runs on through *Dangerous*, *HIStory*, *Invincible* and the posthumous releases, and the drop-off is steep. A catalogue with three untouchable albums and seven that need defending is a strange shape for the best-selling artist in the room.
Ten albums, and the argument is really about second place. Play it →
## The moonwalk vs the Twist: pop's most copied step
Jackson has two entries on this list, which is unusual for a category that spans a century of dance floors.
The moonwalk reached television on *Motown 25*, taped on 25 March 1983 and broadcast that May, during the only non-Motown song in the special.4 He did not invent the glide, and he never claimed to; he took it from street dancers and put it in front of an audience of tens of millions.
Chubby Checker's Twist is the other kind of famous. It was a dance anyone could do badly, which is why it went everywhere in 1960 and why it still turns up at weddings.
The Thriller choreography, voguing, the Charleston and the Single Ladies routine round out a list where the question quietly changes from "which move is best" to "which move did the most people copy".
A category where he has two entries, which is its own kind of answer. Play it →
## Black or White: the video that had to follow Thriller
Fifteen Michael Jackson videos is a deep list for a format most artists treat as promotion.
"Black or White" premiered on 14 November 1991 straight after an episode of *The Simpsons*, going out in 27 countries at once to a reported 500 million viewers, introducing morphing to a mass audience and casting Macaulay Culkin at the height of *Home Alone*.11 Its final four minutes were cut after complaints and have circulated separately ever since.
"Thriller" is the obvious answer, and the specialists prefer "Smooth Criminal" or the Martin Scorsese-directed "Bad".
The later entries are where this list gets interesting: "Scream", made with his sister Janet in 1995, is listed by Guinness World Records as the most expensive music video ever made at $7 million, and almost nobody names it first.12
Fifteen videos deep, long after most artists would have run out. Play it →
## Freddie Mercury vs Michael Jackson: two ways to hold a stadium
Live performance is where Jackson's case gets harder, because the competition is enormous and the criteria are not his.
His argument is production. The Bad tour played 123 shows to 4.4 million people between September 1987 and January 1989, and the choreographed stadium spectacle every pop tour now copies was assembled on it.10
Freddie Mercury's argument is twenty-one minutes at Wembley in July 1985, with no set, no dancers and a full stadium singing back. Queen's Live Aid set is the standing benchmark for what one performer can do with a microphone.
Behind them the list is brutal: James Brown, Prince, Tina Turner, Elvis Presley, Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé. James Brown worked six nights a week for decades and fined his own band for missed cues. Prince could play an unannounced club show at three in the morning after a stadium.
Being untouchable at one thing settles nothing here, because every name on the list was untouchable at something, and the criteria pull against each other. Choreography is measurable and rehearsable; the thing Mercury did at Wembley is neither.
Eighteen names, and Freddie Mercury's Live Aid is standing right next to him. Play it →
## Super Bowl XXVII: the halftime show that changed halftime
Before 1993 the Super Bowl halftime slot was marching bands and theme medleys, and viewers used it to leave the room.
Jackson's set on 31 January 1993 drew 133.4 million American viewers and was the first halftime show to hold a larger audience than the game around it.5 Every stadium-pop halftime since has been booked on the assumption that show established.
Prince's 2007 performance is the one that beat him at his own trick. He played "Purple Rain" in an actual downpour, on a symbol-shaped stage, and nobody had ordered the weather.
The list runs to fifteen and now includes Bad Bunny's 2026 show, which means the category Jackson invented is still being contested by people who were not born when he invented it.
One set in 1993, measured against Prince in the rain and Bad Bunny this year. Play it →
## The red Thriller jacket vs Ziggy Stardust's jumpsuit
A wardrobe question, and Jackson has two entries again: the red-and-black jacket from the 1983 video, and the single crystal glove.
The jacket, designed by Deborah Nadoolman Landis, sold at Julien's Auctions for $1.8 million in June 2011.13 The glove is stranger as an object, because a single sequinned glove has no function at all beyond being recognisable from the back row.
David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust bodysuit is the counter-case. Kansai Yamamoto built it for a character Bowie retired on stage in 1973, and it argues that the best costume is one that creates a person who did not previously exist.
Gaga's meat dress, Björk's swan and Elton John's sequinned Dodgers uniform are here too, so the real test becomes whether you rank clothes by shock, by craft or by Halloween-costume count.
A wardrobe question, and he appears twice without either item being a costume. Play it →
## Stevie Wonder vs Michael Jackson: whose catalogue holds up
Judge a whole body of work rather than one record and the shape of Jackson's career starts to matter.
His peak is as concentrated as anyone's: three albums between 1979 and 1987, thirteen Grammy Awards in total, and eight of them collected in a single night in 1984, a record only Santana has matched.6
Stevie Wonder's case is length. Between 1972 and 1976 he released five albums in a row that are still discussed as a single achievement, and he was writing, producing and playing most of the instruments himself.
The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Prince and Nina Simone occupy the same field. This is the section where Jackson reads as one name among peers rather than as the reference point.
Judged on a whole catalogue, he is one name among Bowie, Dylan and Miles Davis. Play it →
## The Jackson 5 vs the Supremes: Motown's own pecking order
Go back to where he started and the King of Pop is an eleven-year-old in a group with his brothers.
The Jackson 5 signed to Motown in 1968 and sent their first four singles to number one in 1970, a start no act on the label had managed. Michael sang lead on all of them. Diana Ross inducted the group into the Hall of Fame in Cleveland in 1997, four years before Jackson was inducted on his own.7
The Supremes are the label's chart record: twelve US number ones between 1964 and 1969, and the act that made Motown a crossover business rather than a Detroit one.
Behind them are the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder again, plus the Four Tops, Martha and the Vandellas and the Marvelettes, whose "Please Mr. Postman" gave Motown its first number-one pop single in 1961.
On any other roster the Jackson 5 would be the headline. On this one they are the youngest act in a very crowded room, and the case for them rests on what one of the five did next.
Back where he started, and the Supremes and Marvin Gaye got there first. Play it →
## Like a Virgin vs Thriller: who owns the 1980s
Narrow the pop album question to one decade and the field gets sharper rather than easier.
Madonna's *Like a Virgin* is the case for the artist who defined what a pop star did next: the 1984 MTV Awards performance, the wedding dress, and a level of control over her own image that Jackson never had to negotiate for.
His decade is the one where the sales record and the cultural record are the same record, with *Bad* arriving three years later to prove it was not luck.
Prince's *Purple Rain*, Whitney Houston's debut, Springsteen's *Born in the USA* and Janet Jackson's *Rhythm Nation 1814* fill out a list where six or seven albums have a real claim. The 1980s are the one decade where his ownership is genuinely contested by people who were on the radio at the same time.
The decade he is supposed to own, with Madonna and Prince on the same list. Play it →
## ABBA Gold vs Number Ones: the compilation shelf
Here is a category almost nobody thinks about, and Jackson is filed on it too.
*Number Ones* collected his solo singles in 2003 and has been the album non-fans own ever since.
*ABBA Gold* is the format's masterpiece: released in 1992, it outsold everything the group put out while they were together.
Bob Marley's *Legend* and the Beatles' *1* are the other contenders, and the criterion here is unlike any other list in this article. A greatest-hits album is judged on sequencing and on who it converted, not on what it cost to make.
An odd shelf to be filed on, against ABBA Gold and Bob Marley's Legend. Play it →
## This Is It: fifty shows that never opened
The residency was announced as a farewell and sold out within hours: fifty nights at London's O2, the first booked for 13 July 2009. Jackson died on 25 June, eighteen days before opening night, and the rehearsal footage was released as a film instead.8
What makes it a genuine what-if rather than a sad ending is that nobody agrees what the shows would have been. He was fifty and had not toured since the HIStory dates ended in 1997. The rehearsal footage that became the film shows a singer marking his vocals and a production built around illusions rather than stamina, which supports both readings: the comeback that would have worked, and the fifty nights that were never physically available.
Kenny Ortega, who directed the staging, was assembling a show designed to run into March 2010.
The Beach Boys' *SMiLE* is the other kind of unfinished business. Brian Wilson abandoned it in 1967 and completed it thirty-seven years later, which is the closest thing this list has to a resolved case.
Lauryn Hill's missing second album, Jeff Buckley's unfinished one and the Smiths reunion nobody could buy sit alongside it. Each shares a quality with Jackson's entry: the absence gets more discussion than most artists' actual output.
Fifty shows that never opened, on a list of records that were never made. Play it →
## The Wiz vs Moonwalker: the shelf where he is thin
Every previous list has been a category he shaped. This one is a category that never quite worked for him.
*The Wiz* in 1978 was his only major acting role in a studio film: Diana Ross played Dorothy, Sidney Lumet directed, the film lost money, and the lasting result was that Jackson met Quincy Jones on set.
*Moonwalker* from 1988 is the strongest entry and it is not really a film. It is an anthology of segments built around his own videos, which went straight to home video in the United States.
What remains is long-form music videos, a Disney theme-park short and the posthumous rehearsal documentary. Fifteen lists put him in the top rank of pop music. On the film shelf the honest answer is that his strongest work in cinemas arrived in 2026, with someone else playing him.
The thinnest shelf he has: a musical, a concert film and a run of long-form videos. Play it →
## Fifteen filing systems, one Michael Jackson
Sorted by song he is unbeatable, by album he competes with himself, by catalogue he joins a queue, and by Motown seniority he is the youngest act on the roster. The categories move him around; none of them lose him.
Fifteen questions, fifteen answers, and no contradiction between any of them. The order in each one comes out of [pairwise voting](/articles/what-is-pairwise-comparison): a reader sees two options, chooses, and the field arranges itself from thousands of those small decisions. The biopic's own reviews were mixed, incidentally, at 38% on Rotten Tomatoes against an A− CinemaScore from audiences, which is roughly the split this article keeps finding.9
Disagree with where any of it lands? Every list above is open, and building one of your own takes a question and ten answers.
## More rankings, more angles
- [Beyoncé Doesn't Rank the Same Way Twice](/articles/beyonce-ranked-many-ways) — Coachella, Destiny's Child and sixteen categories
- [How Many Ways Can You Rank Madonna?](/articles/how-many-ways-to-rank-madonna) — the other artist who owned the 1980s
- [The Beatles vs The Rolling Stones: 16 Lists That Can't Agree](/articles/beatles-vs-rolling-stones-ranked) — the catalogue argument, head to head
Sources
Variety — Michael streaming release date after its billion-dollar theatrical run: variety.com (checked 2026-08-16)
Billboard — RIAA certifications: Thriller at 34× platinum, passed by the Eagles at 38×: billboard.com (checked 2026-08-16)
Wikipedia — Michael Jackson's Thriller (music video): the first music video selected for the Library of Congress National Film Registry, in 2009: wikipedia.org (checked 2026-08-16)
Wikipedia — Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, taping and broadcast dates: wikipedia.org (checked 2026-08-16)
Wikipedia — Super Bowl XXVII halftime show audience: wikipedia.org (checked 2026-08-16)
Recording Academy — Michael Jackson's Grammy record, 13 wins and eight in one night: grammy.com (checked 2026-08-16)
