Madonna's new studio album CONFESSIONS II has debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 (dated July 18), placing the Queen of Pop in the top 10 alongside the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, whose 1983-84 chart-topper Thriller slips from No. 7 to No. 8. Remarkably, this is only the second time the two pop icons have appeared in the chart's top 10 simultaneously, and the first such occasion in nearly 25 years, underlining how rarely their prolific careers have overlapped at the very top.

The pair last shared the top 10 on the 1 December 2001 chart, when Jackson's Invincible sat at No. 4 and Madonna's compilation GHV2 debuted at No. 7. They came agonisingly close in the 1980s — spending a combined 57 weeks at No. 1 (Jackson 41, Madonna 16) — but missed each other by a single week in 1987, when Madonna's Who's That Girl soundtrack fell out of the top 10 just as Jackson's Bad debuted at No. 1. The article attributes their scarce overlaps to differing release schedules, noting only four instances (1987, 1995, 2001 and 2009) where both put out top 10 albums within six months of one another; CONFESSIONS II marks Madonna's 24th top 10 album, while Jackson tallied top 10s both before and after his death in 2009.