To give you a sense of what 2006 looked like in terms of popular music, let us put it this way: the best-selling album of the whole year was none other than the soundtrack to the movie High School Musical, selling nearly four million copies.

It was also a great time for R&B and hip hop artists like Mary J. Blige (The Breakthrough), Nelly Furtado (Loose), Beyonce (B’Day), Ludacris (Release Therapy) and Jay-Z (Kingdom Come), to name a few. All of these albums spent time at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. There were some country releases in the mix that year, too, like Rascal Flatts’ Me and My Gang and the Dixie Chicks’ Taking the Long Way.

But in the middle of all of that, rock still managed to squeeze its way up to the top of the charts with a handful of releases. We’re taking a look at all 10 of them in the below list, in the chronological order they made the No. 1 spot in, but to be clear, we’re using a flexible definition of “rock” to account for all the worthy albums.

1. The Greatest Songs of the Fifties, Barry Manilow

The 2000s was when a number of older artists chose to look backward at the Great American Songbook, recording cover albums full of songs first made popular decades prior. Barry Manilow did it in 2006 with The Greatest Songs of the Fifties, a release that awarded him the second chart-topping album of his career (the first was back in 1997 with Barry Manilow Live).

Even Manilow was “shocked and delighted” by the success, he said at the time. “I think it has become so popular because the public is starved for a good melody and lyric.”

Listen to Barry Manilow’s Cover of ‘Beyond the Sea’ From ‘The Greatest Songs of the Fifties’

2. 3121, Prince

In 2004, Prince made his “comeback” of sorts with Musicology, an album that won multiple Grammys, went to No. 3 on the U.S. chart and was, in effect, his most successful record in years — “his best since the symbol record,” Pitchfork wrote then. He followed up on that success with even more success: 2006’s 3121 went to No. 1, the only Prince album to debut at the top of the Billboard 200 while he was alive. It was 3121 that first knocked the High School Musical soundtrack off the No. 1 spot.

Watch the Music Video for Prince’s ‘Black Sweat’ From ‘3121’

3. IV, Godsmack

Godsmack’s IV, reached No. 1 in May of 2006, less than a month after it came out. IV sold an impressive 211,000 copies in America in just its first week of release.

Here, they teamed up with producer Andy Johns, a man who worked with just about every big name in British rock music from Led Zeppelin to the Rolling Stones to Eric Clapton.

“There were a lot of things that happened on this record that were different than the way we worked in the past,” lead singer and primary songwriter Sully Erna said back then. “And one of those was me letting go of the steering wheel a bit, allowing the band control over the writing and me stepping away to an outside point of view and coming up with lyrics for what I viewed as another group entirely. … I knew this new year would be rocking for us.”

Listen to 'Shine Down' From Godsmack's 'IV'

4. 10,000 Days, Tool

In addition to landing the No. 1 spot, Tool’s 10,000 Days yielded not just one but three top ten rock singles: “Vicarious,” “The Pot” and “Jambi.” (And as it turned out, it was the last album they released for over ten years until Fear Inoculum arrived in 2019.) It also won a Grammy for Best Recording Package.

For 10,000 Days, Maynard James Keenan got personal with his songwriting and wound up regretting it, even with how well the album was received.

“I’ll never make that mistake again,” Keenan reflected after the album came out. “It just took too much out of me – too much emotionally, mentally, physically – all those manifestations. Those songs were exploited and misconstrued; people were flippant and dismissive. I won’t be doing that anymore.”

Listen to Tool's 'Vicarious' From '10,000 Days'

5. Stadium Arcadium, Red Hot Chili Peppers

Stadium Arcadium, a Red Hot Chili Peppers double album, was released in America on May 9, 2006. Within a few weeks, it was No. 1, making it their very first album to reach that spot. The following year came a whopping seven Grammy nominations, including one for Best Rock Album. (It won four of them.)

Rolling Stone called Stadium Arcadium the band’s “most ambitious work of its 23-year career — an attempt to consolidate everything that is Chili Peppers…a late-career triumph that could pass for another, lesser group’s greatest-hits collection.”

“It wasn’t a shock, but it’s always a pleasant surprise,” drummer Chad Smith said of the success back then, speaking with The Salt Lake Tribune. “You never know. You work so hard on this music; you’re just so focused on writing songs and playing them and recording them and mixing them; everything that goes into making an album takes about a year. And finally, you’re like ‘OK, it’s finished. Here you go.’ Now this little private thing that we’ve had this long time with us is all of a sudden released on the world. It’s kind of scary, but we were excited about it. We worked really hard and this is some of the best music we’ve ever done.”

Watch the Music Video for the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ ‘Dani California’ From ‘Stadium Arcadium’

READ MORE: 15 Chad Smith Collaborations Outside the Red Hot Chili Peppers

6. American V: A Hundred Highways, Johnny Cash

Sure, Johnny Cash might not be the name that comes immediately to mind when one thinks of rock music, but we’d argue that when your album is produced by Rick Rubin and features the work of Heartbreakers Benmont Tench and Mike Campbell, that warrants some attention here. (“We really tried to step up for Johnny Cash,” Tench later recalled to jambands.com, “even above and beyond the usual call.”)

This was the case for Cash’s 2006 album American V: A Hundred Highways, a No. 1 hit that summer which made it Cash’s first No. 1 album in nearly 40 years. Of course, Cash never got to see this success — American V: A Hundred Highways had been recorded prior to his death in 2003.

Listen to Johnny Cash’s Cover of ‘If You Could Read My Mind’ From ‘American V: A Hundred Highways’

7. Modern Times, Bob Dylan

This is quite an interesting fact: when Bob Dylan’s Modern Times hit No. 1 in 2006, it was his first album to grab that spot since he released Desire (1976). On top of that, Dylan was 65 years old at that time making him one of the oldest living persons at that moment to have an album enter at No. 1 on The Billboard (Tony Bennett would break that record at age 88 in 2014).

The critics nearly unanimously loved Modern Times . Even Robert Christgau admitted in his review: “Yep, rock’s greatest songwriter.” Not that Dylan was all that concerned with what industry critics were saying.

“You just released this amazing new record,” said The Rolling Stone . “The title, Modern Times seems to be a very deliberate statement.” Dylan’s reply: “Well I don’t know; can you think of a better title?”