Her recollections of recording “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” are just a little hazy. She remembers the producer inserting decorations across the studio and blasting the air conditioner on a heat Nashville day to create a vacation spirit. The musicians, she remembers, nailed it in a few takes.
That is about it. In any case, Brenda Lee was 13 years outdated on the time — and it was 66 years in the past, in 1958.
Considerably implausibly, her celebration of a “Christmas party hop” is extra standard at the moment than ever earlier than. It is an uncommon trajectory, even accounting for the truth that music listeners in the course of the vacation season are likely to embrace songs they’ve recognized for years.
In 2023, Lee launched two music movies for the tune. “Rockin’” eclipsed Mariah Carey’s perennial favourite “All I Want for Christmas is You” final December to prime the Billboard music chart and make Lee, at age 78, the oldest lady to realize that feat. Every week later, following a birthday, she beat her personal mark. Kendrick Lamar possible stands in her means of doing it once more this yr.
One other file: Sixty-five years represented the longest interval between a file being launched and making it to No. 1.
“It is a good song,” Lee, who turned 80 on Dec. 11, informed The Related Press. “It’s a song that anybody can sing. You can join in, you can sing it, everyone is happy. I sure am glad that I have it. I never thought in my life that a Christmas song would be my legacy. But I’ll take it.”
‘An ear worm on steroids’
It is a phenomenon that music journalist Holly Gleason seen just lately whereas stopping for espresso in Florida. The tune came visiting the loudspeaker and the room — mother and father, children, hipsters — erupted in singing and laughter. “It’s kind of an ear worm on steroids,” stated Gleason, whose 2017 e book “Woman Walk the Line: How the Women in Country Music Changed Our Lives” featured Lee, amongst others.
The tune manages the neat trick of sounding retro but not dated. Candy guitar licks snake round Lee’s voice within the authentic recording. Boots Randolph’s saxophone solo drives it dwelling. The occasion flies by shortly, the tune over in two minutes, six seconds.
Composer Johnny Marks already had some seasonal hits to his credit score, together with “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “A Holly Jolly Christmas.” He particularly sought out Lee for his new tune in 1958 and it is simple to see why: Who higher to convey its innocence and spirit than a 13-year-old lady on the forefront of the Child Increase? Rock ‘n’ roll was in its infancy then, too.
Within the tune, Lee sings about “mistletoe hung where you can see, every couple tries to stop.”
In actual life, she hadn’t skilled her first kiss. “Lord, no,” she stated. “Not to say I didn’t want to. I wasn’t even allowed to date until I was 16.”
What’s the ‘new old-fashioned way,’ anyway?
The tune hits loads of vacation reference factors — pumpkin pie, caroling, boughs of holly. You possibly can overlook the a part of the refrain that does not make a lot sense: what’s the “new old-fashioned way,” precisely?
The simplicity of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” is an enormous a part of its enchantment, stated Nathaniel Sloan, a musicologist on the College of Southern California and co-host of the “Switched on Pop” podcast. Like many profitable vacation songs, it evokes nostalgia for a happier, extra peaceable time — even when that is extra creativeness than actuality, he stated.
The model is extra rockabilly than conventional rock or nation, and Sloan believes that has a lot to do with why it continues to sound contemporary.
“The thing that has always stunned me about the song is that you’re listening to a 13-year-old’s performance, and it doesn’t sound that way to me,” he stated. “There’s a depth to the vocal, even a weathered quality, that I can’t believe she was so young. It’s pitch-perfect.”
For all of its success, the tune was barely seen upon its launch in 1958. Not till two years later, when Lee’s profile was larger via hits like “I’m Sorry,” did it make the music charts. Its greatest enhance got here 40 years after that, when “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” was featured within the hit film “Home Alone.” The film itself has turn into a vacation staple, giving extra publicity to the tune annually.
Her file firm continues to push the tune, recording a video in 2023 that included visitor appearances by Tanya Tucker and Trisha Yearwood. This yr it has launched “Noche Buena Y Navidad,” a Spanish-language model utilizing synthetic intelligence to create a vocal derived from Lee’s voice.
The file firm is throwing Lee a birthday celebration
Common Music held a celebration for her in Nashville to have fun her eightieth birthday earlier this month. “She’s just a force and a character,” stated Cindy Mabe, the corporate’s chairwoman and CEO. “She’s full of spunk in the same way that 13-year-old girl was.”
“Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” made the Grammy Corridor of Fame in 2019. It has been streamed greater than 2.5 billion occasions globally and authorized seven occasions Platinum, which means at the very least seven million copies bought. Kelly Clarkson, Miley Cyrus, Meghan Trainor, Kacey Musgraves and the duo of Darlene Love & Ronnie Spector are among the many artists who’ve lined it.
Lee has sung it numerous occasions over time, most just lately at a charity occasion final yr. It made her live performance setlist even within the warmth of summer time. How a lot cash the tune has earned is murky; the file firm would not discuss it. The majority of its revenue would possible go to Marks’ property.
“It has never been a money thing for me,” Lee stated. “It’s been a love thing. The money is great, yes, and I’m grateful. But I would be singing it on the corner for pennies because that’s what I love to do.”
