Brenda Lee may have received the greatest gift of the holiday season: for the first time, her holiday classic “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” has gone No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Written by Johnny Marks, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” was originally recorded and released in 1958. It previously peaked at No. 2 in 2019, but was propelled to No. 1 in 2023 thanks in part to a newly released music video coinciding with the song’s 65th anniversary.
“Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” which Lee recorded in 1958, when she was just 13, has been a seasonal standard for years, including an appearance in the 1990 movie “Home Alone.” In recent years, streaming playlists have given it a boost, sending the song to No. 2 multiple times, though until now it was always held from the top by Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” which has hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart each holiday season for the last four years.
For 2023, however, Lee has made a renewed push for “Rockin’” — as the singer prefers to call it — including a new music video (see Below) and a TikTok Account, and it has paid off, with Lee, now 78, beating Carey to the top of the chart this week in a photo finish, separated by just a couple of million streams.
“I would’ve never thought in my wildest dreams that ‘Rockin’’ would be my signature song,” Lee said in a recent interview from her home in Nashville.
Lee previously earned No. 1 singles for “I’m Sorry” in July 1960 and “I Want To Be Wanted” in October 1960. The nearly 65 years between those two singles and her latest chart-topper sets a record for the longest stretch in Billboard history. Accordingly, Lee also broke the record for the longest span of an artist topping the Hot 100.
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