Overview
- The song “Chicago” entered the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 30 on the chart dated June 6, giving Michael Jackson his 52nd solo Hot 100 hit and completing entries in the 1970s through the 2020s.
- Billboard and Luminate reported that the rise was driven almost entirely by streaming, with 10.7 million official U.S. streams for “Chicago” in the May 22–28 tracking week.
- “Chicago” first appeared on the posthumous 2014 album Xscape and was not released as a single, but a sped-up TikTok clip that circulated starting in 2023 helped introduce the track to younger listeners.
- Renewed interest in Jackson’s catalog followed the April release of the biopic Michael, which has earned roughly $846–850 million worldwide and coincided with multiple Jackson songs re-entering the charts.
- The track was originally recorded around 2001 as “She Was Loving Me” and later re-produced by Timbaland for Xscape, and Billboard’s rule that older songs can re-enter the Hot 100 when they rank in the top 50 explains how archival cuts can chart years after release.