In our weekly feature “THE WEEKLY,” music critic Seo Seongdeok takes stock of the biggest developments in the music industry each week. Catch up on the latest stories in music, from major artist moves to notable new releases, “Billboard” chart highlights, and more.
My Chemical Romance marches to No. 1 after 20 years
My Chemical Romance’s 2006 album “The Black Parade” has jumped from No. 139 to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart dated November 7, following the release of its 20th-anniversary deluxe edition. The album originally peaked at No. 2 behind the “Hannah Montana” soundtrack. The 20-year gap between its release and its first week at No. 1 is the longest in Billboard 200 history. The band has earned four top 10 albums, but “The Black Parade” is its first chart-topper.
Other major artists have also seen their reissues return to the upper reaches of the charts this year. In September, Beyoncé’s “B’Day” reentered at No. 8, while Mac Miller’s “The Divine Feminine” climbed to No. 10. The Beatles’ “Rubber Soul” followed in October, reentering at No. 4. But My Chemical Romance’s No. 1 stands out for a different reason. This is more than renewed interest in an old favorite: The band is still finding new ways to bring “The Black Parade” to life. The key is its live shows.
After their 2022–23 reunion tour, My Chemical Romance launched “Long Live The Black Parade” in the summer of 2025. For the first half of each show, the band performs songs from “The Black Parade” as part of a theatrical production set in the fictional authoritarian state of Draag, complete with political satire. The second half sees the band return as themselves, playing hits, covers, and more, with a different setlist each night. Rather than simply revisiting an old favorite, the tour builds on the original album with an entirely new narrative. As the story of Draag evolved from show to show, the tour became something of a countdown to the 20th anniversary of “The Black Parade.”
The tour’s remarkable commercial success speaks for itself. According to Billboard Boxscore, My Chemical Romance’s 2007–08 “Black Parade World Tour” averaged $183,600 in gross ticket sales and 5,415 attendees per show. By comparison, a single show on the band’s 2025 “Long Live The Black Parade” tour, held in Tampa on September 13, grossed $9,787,949 and drew 48,489 fans, according to Pollstar. An arena act 20 years ago, My Chemical Romance is now selling out stadiums across its tour. That achievement is even more impressive given rock’s shrinking share of the live concert market. According to Billboard, rock accounted for just 30.2% of gross revenue generated by the top 100 tours in 2025, its lowest share on record.
Even My Chemical Romance’s post-pandemic reunion tour seemed like an exceptional success at the time, grossing more than $1 million per show. That success was often chalked up to pent-up demand for live music and the newfound spending power of fans who had grown up with the band in the early 2000s. But by expanding the world of “The Black Parade” while keeping fans on their toes with unpredictable setlists, My Chemical Romance has found a new level of success. Of course, whether a band that has released just one new single since reuniting can truly be said to have undergone a revival is open to debate. Still, it is hard to argue with the assessment that My Chemical Romance are now rock’s greatest showmen.
Harry Styles makes New York’s fall one for the books
Harry Styles has wrapped up his 30-show residency at Madison Square Garden (MSG). Starting August 26, he took the stage every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday for 10 weeks. All 30 shows sold out, drawing an estimated 500,000-plus fans. It was the most shows ever performed in a single residency at MSG, doubling Styles’s previous record of 15 shows in 2022.
Harry Styles’s 30-show residency at MSG accounted for all of his U.S. dates in 2026. Nearly 45% of his 67 scheduled shows worldwide were concentrated at a single venue, meaning American fans had to make the pilgrimage to New York. Demand remained strong nonetheless. The presale drew 11.5 million registrations, setting a Ticketmaster record for a single market, with demand exceeding the available seats by more than 20 to one. During the residency, however, Styles announced a North American stadium tour for 2027. In hindsight, the New York run offered an early indication of the demand for his first U.S. stadium tour as a solo artist.
All fall, New York City was “Harry’s House.” Fans lined up outside his East Village pop-up store, while pedicabs around MSG played his music. Styles walked to work nearly every day, making the trip from where he was staying in Brooklyn to MSG in Midtown Manhattan. When he took the ferry one day, NYC Ferry even thanked him on social media for taking public transit to work. At the October 31 finale, he showed up dressed as a Pizza Rat for Halloween (a parody of the viral video of a rat dragging a slice of pizza through a New York City subway station). That night, New York Knicks captain Jalen Brunson presented him with a commemorative banner. For two months, Styles was a New Yorker.
Could Halloween become the next Christmas for music?
The six biggest percentage gainers on the Streaming Songs chart dated November 7 all have Halloween-related themes. Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” perhaps the quintessential Halloween hit, jumped from No. 37 to No. 10 on the chart. During the October 23–29 tracking week, the song’s streams rose 49%, while radio airplay doubled and digital song sales climbed 61%. “Thriller” also re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 20, continuing a streak of annual Halloween-season appearances on the chart dating back to 2018.
One of the latest additions to Halloween playlists is “Dracula” by Tame Impala and JENNIE. The song is spending its seventh week at No. 1 on the Radio Songs chart, and an 11% jump in streams this week sent it from No. 35 to No. 25 on the Streaming Songs chart. The boost also helped the song climb from No. 8 back to its previous peak of No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. Already one of the biggest hits of 2026, “Dracula” looks poised to become an annual Halloween fixture.
The Halloween music season is starting earlier and getting bigger every year. During the week of October 9–15, two weeks before Halloween, “Thriller” logged 5.9 million streams, up 44% from 4.1 million during the same period a year earlier. On October 31, U.S. Spotify streams of Halloween-themed songs rose from 41.5 million in 2024 to 44.3 million in 2026, an increase of roughly 7% over two years. The number of Halloween-themed tracks on Spotify’s U.S. Top 200 chart also rose from 49 to 54.
Next week’s charts will include streaming activity from October 30 and Halloween itself. On Spotify’s global chart for October 31, Halloween-themed songs swept the top three spots: “Thriller” at No. 1, “Ghostbusters” at No. 2, and “Monster Mash” at No. 3. “Thriller” had been at No. 8 just a day earlier, before its streams more than doubled on Halloween. The song could become a serious contender for the top spots on the charts as early as this year. Of course, as Mariah Carey’s annual “It’s time!” reminds us, Christmas season begins the moment Halloween ends. Halloween music may not have the same reach as Christmas music, but is that much consolation to artists releasing new songs who now have to compete with seasonal favorites for streams starting in October?