On Oct. 29, 1983, the top albums on the Billboard 200 were The Police's Synchronicity, Michael Jackson's Thriller and Quiet Riot's Metal Health. Further down the chart, Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon sat at No. 152 - a comparatively anonymous position, but in reality the beginning of a chart milestone the band still holds: the most weeks on the chart by one LP.
The British band's eighth album was a certified hit when it was released in 1973; it topped the charts in the United Staes (reaching No. 2 in England) earned a gold record from the Recording Industry Association of America. But a funny thing happened - Dark Side never left Billboard's album chart. That week in 1983 marked the album's 491st week in the charts, breaking the record held by Johnny Mathis' Johnny's Greatest Hits. It wasn't until 1988 that it fell out of the Billboard 200 - and shortly after leaving, it came back briefly, for a total of 741 weeks spent in that chart during those 15 years.
Read More: May 1973: Pink Floyd Releases "Money"
From there, The Dark Side of the Moon became a fixture of the magazine's Top Catalog Albums chart...until December 18, 2009 when, following a change in chart calculations, catalog albums were allowed to re-enter the main list. In May 2020, the album logged its 950th week on the Billboard 200. To this day, no other album comes close.
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