Look out, Mariah: Brenda Lee is gunning for that #1 spot once again.
Last December Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree,” one of several holiday classics that have begun to surge back up the charts every yuletide season thanks to streaming, hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart for three weeks, 65 years after its release. At 78, Lee became the oldest person to ever top the chart. Her campaign was aided by a new official music video for “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” and a promo campaign reminding people to stream the song. Eventually Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” returned to #1 for a fifth straight year, but Lee’s achievement suggested other Christmas songs had a chance at the seasonal throne.
This year Lee is back with a much stranger and more dystopian way to gas her streaming stats. Under the supervision of producer Auero Baqueiro, she has approved an AI-generated Spanish-language version of “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” called “Noche Buena y Navidad.” The song uses the original 1958 backing track but replaces Lee’s vocals with an artificial Spanish-language vocal created by the SoundLabs AI plug-in MicDrop.
A statement from Lee:
I am so blown away by this new Spanish version of “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree,” which was created with the help of AI. Throughout my career, I performed and recorded many songs in different languages, but I never recorded “Rockin’” in Spanish, which I would have loved to do. To have this out now is pretty incredible and I’m happy to introduce the song to fans in a new way.
Listen below.
