It seems you have JSON lines in your file. Use lines=True in pd.read_json:

df = pd.read_json("data.json", lines=True)
df.to_excel("data.xlsx", index=False)

Creates data.xlsx (screenshot from LibreOffice):

Went through a couple of solutions, this is the one that worked best for me. Hope this can save someone else some time.

import pandas
import json

# Read excel document
excel_data_df = pandas.read_excel('data.xlsx', sheet_name='sheet1')

# Convert excel to string 
# (define orientation of document in this case from up to down)
thisisjson = excel_data_df.to_json(orient='records')

# Print out the result
print('Excel Sheet to JSON:\n', thisisjson)

# Make the string into a list to be able to input in to a JSON-file
thisisjson_dict = json.loads(thisisjson)

# Define file to write to and 'w' for write option -> json.dump() 
# defining the list to write from and file to write to
with open('data.json', 'w') as json_file:
    json.dump(thisisjson_dict, json_file)

Using pandas (0.15.1) and openpyxl (1.8.6):

Copyimport pandas
pandas.read_json("input.json").to_excel("output.xlsx")