The Albums With the Most Top 10 Billboard Hot 100 Hits
As any artists knows, it’s a tough task to score a top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100. The feat usually requires some blend of the following ingredients: a strong song, a charismatic artist, aggressive promotion efforts, a devoted fan base; and, more recently, a viral live performance, meme or other stroke of luck. And that’s just to do it once. To rise (and stay) at the top of the game, demands a consistency that few artists ever achieve. But when artists lock onto that golden combination, they can accomplish a string of hits in rapid succession.
To celebrate those artists, Billboard compiled a roll call of artists who cemented their pop dominance by landing five or more top 10 hits from a single album. Not only does such a feat rely on the same qualities listed above, but for an album to sustain, it needs to recreate those moments for a mass audience over the course of months.
It should come as little surprise, then, that the first album to house five top 10s was Michael Jackson’s Thriller, the best-selling album of all time. At the time, Jackson set the benchmark of seven top 10s from one album – a feat later equaled by Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA (1984-85), Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989-91) and Drake’s Scorpion (2018). The record then quickly changed hands multiple times: Drake’s Certified Lover Boy scored nine top 10 successes in 2021, but was soon eclipsed by Taylor Swift’s 2022 album Midnights, which upped the record to 10. Swift repeated the perfect 10 with her 2024 release, The Tortured Poets Department.
Check out our rundown of albums that have produced five or more top 10 hits on the Hot 100. Drake owns the most projects on the list, with four different albums – while Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson and Taylor Swift are the only other acts with multiple appearances. The who’s-who covers a cross-section of genres, including pop, rock, R&B and hip-hop and includes superstars such as Bon Jovi, Whitney Houston and Katy Perry.
(Note that this list only covers original editions of albums, though three albums – Usher’s Confessions, Rihanna’s Good Girl Gone Bad and Taylor Swift’s Fearless – would qualify if the criteria expanded to deluxe editions and reissues.)
Trevor Anderson
Billboard