My Chemical Romance are back at the top of the charts. The band’s anniversary re-release of The Black Parade has propelled them to number one on the UK Albums chart for the very first time, according to Chart-Watch UK’s analysis of the week ending November 12 — and in the United States, the same reissue has taken the top spot on the Billboard 200 dated November 7, ahead of Olivia Rodrigo’s album, according to MusicTimes.
The UK result is the more striking of the two. The Black Parade is twenty years old — the original album was released in 2006, the year its signature track “Welcome to the Black Parade” took the group to the top of the singles chart for the first and only time. The anniversary re-release has now done what the original never did: it has taken the band to the top of the albums chart.
A 2006 chart, replayed
The week has a deliberate echo of 2006. Chart-Watch UK notes that the number one album twenty years ago, in the same chart week, was Rudebox by Robbie Williams — and that the record labels have chosen to reproduce 2006 for the week’s chart, celebrating the almost-20th anniversaries of two particularly notable albums. The Black Parade’s return to the top is the centrepiece of that exercise.
In the United States, the picture is the same. Rodrigo’s album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, fell from one to two on the Billboard 200 dated November 7 with 64,000 units, behind My Chemical Romance, according to MusicTimes.
Twenty years on, still number one
The Black Parade has always been the band’s defining record, and its return to the top of the charts twenty years on is a measure of how deeply it has lodged in the culture. It is the album that made My Chemical Romance a stadium band, and its signature track remains their biggest song. The anniversary re-release has turned nostalgia into a chart-topper — and, for the first time, a UK number one album.
