Songs of the Season 2023 – Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree – Brenda Lee

Brenda Lee was 13 years old when she recorded “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” in 1958; from what I’ve heard and read (including Wikipedia), it didn’t do much that year, and only got to #14 in 1960, after she had more chart successes.

Christmas songs do weird things on the charts to begin with, but these days, with streaming and downloads and such, the December Billboard charts see quite a resurgence of old songs coming back. For each of the last four years, this song has hit #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in December; this year, it finally hit #1, breaking all sorts of records, including longest amount of time from release to #1 (65 years), longest time between #1 hits for an artist (63 years), and making Brenda Lee the oldest artist ever to hit #1. It’s amazing that she lived to see this happen!

If you check out some of these scenes, it’s stunning how small Brenda Lee is; apparently, she only ever was 4’9″ tall, and now, she’s probably somewhat under that.

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