Jan 13 - No Christmas songs are in the top 100 Jan 06 - Back at number 1! Amazing, 3 weeks at the top in 2023-24. Dec 30 - No change Dec 23 - Now at #2. "All I Want" is number 1 this week. Dec 16 - Numero Uno for the 2nd week in a row! Dec 9 - RACT is #1!!! It leapt over "All I Want" which was #4 last week. Brenda becomes the oldest person ever with a #1 record. Dec 2 - Starting out earlier on the chart this year, RACT is No 8 for the 1rst week in December. The Official stats for 2022: 240M streams. Recently, It was certified 5x Platinum by the RIAA, which means 5,000,000 sold. Her total records sold is usually given as "over a 100 million" in biographies, but the true amount of records that Brenda Lee has sold is unknown due to record company cheating. The best guesstimate is somewhere north of 200 million!
When asked about her voice breaks, hiccups, etc., Brenda really doesn't know why she decided to use them. She said it just seemed like they belonged there.
Brenda Lee's phrasing makes it difficult to cover her songs. Sometimes she is not pausing between lines as she drives the song forward but with no loss of tempo or volume. And she easily does the voice breaks, rasps and other vocal tricks along the way. Most covers wind up simplifying the song and the recording doesn't measure up.
Many singers have covered this song but no one can sing it like the original singer, Ms. Brenda Lee! Thanks so much for sharing this awesome rockin' Christmas song!
*Brenda Lee's Statement in 2019* : 'When I recorded "Rockin'' in 1958 I never could have dream't that it would become a Christmas standard that would be listened to year after year and loved by generation after generation," said Lee in a statement. "I always loved the song and knew it was great, and that was the main criteria for me and Owen Bradley, but we never imagined it would become the quintessential Christmas song it has become. It's been an amazing journey with this song.' Source: Billboard magazine. The song is at an all time high of #2 on the Hot 100. It has 37.1 million U.S. streams in the week ending Dec. 12!
Yes, never a flat note. Never had a singing lesson. Never even needed to rehearse except for the band's sake. Some records were first takes and many could have been except for the producer's desire to tweak the arrangements.
Mostly Brenda you can't pay any attention to these fools posting, most are trolls anyway. They wouldn't know Brenda if they tripped over her. You delete what you wish. You and I know what a tremendous singer she was
Hard to believe that "Home Alone" is thirty years ago, but "Rockin' Around" still was #2 on the chart this past holiday season. It just keeps rollin' along.
Dear Brenda , it Really Isn't Christmas to me till i Hear You Sing My Favorite Christmas Song ! Thank You ! this song fills me with so much emotion i can never get through it without choking up and tears in my eyes 🥰❤❤❤❤❤🎅
My three year old is obsessed with this song.. only brenda's version ofc! i want to hear Brenda he says lol what an awesome song. certainly the best song to put u in that christmas mood! 🎄
I've loved this song for years and my granddaughter love this song also, she knows whenever we are together, and I hear it I have to stop whatever I'm doing to sing along and dance.
Brenda was a trail blazer in unique vocalizations, the sign of a true artist. I think that is why she has been so beloved by so many. I wish they would put the old black and white video of her singing this song backup on youtube. Loved to watch it at christmas time. You can see how her style influenced singers like Cindy Lauper, and many other contemporary artists.
This song never gets boring or "old". I play drums, and always look forward to jamming it out on my kit--sounds even better on Paiste 2002 cymbals, 'ya know! I play it true to the original, no "hot dogging" in it at all, playing what was played originally. This is classic '50's style rock and roll, and it still kicks ass today! I have heard other versions by other singers, and all are OK, but NOBODY can sing it like Brenda! She's just a ball of fire with a voice that will shake the windows! This song is timeless, and will NEVER become obsolete---look at Bing Crosby's "White Christmas"--still at the top of the Christmas music charts today, and it came out in 1942! People like Brenda Lee and Bing Crosby were one-of-a-kinds---meaning I believe there will NEVER be another person born on this earth that will ever sound like them again. This is why this music will live on forever. I play the drums, but also took up trumpet, and now I know JUST how great the "greats" were! Their music was pure brilliance--you find this out when you try to play that Herb Alpert tune you grew up with and heard at least a zillion times on your instrument, and it kicks your butt into the ground because it only SOUNDS easy to play--but it ISN'T!! I now (at age 47) find myself getting REALLY emotional when I hear these songs--I used o laugh at my mom when she started crying when she heard White Christmas for the first time in the holiday season, but, alas, this year, it has happened to me--in the Jeep riding to Clifton Park with my mom to do routine errands on 98.3 FM--and we were both so taken by emotion she almost had to pull over! "Oh Holy Night" will do it to me too, and even this Brenda Lee song, as well as Bobby Helms' "Jingle Bell Rock will get my emotions going! Alot of memories, and they never die. Let's enjoy Brenda Lee while we still have her (and Herb Alpert, too!), because all the others I mentioned are no longer with us, and that's truly a sad. sad, loss to the world. Merry Christmas, and keep it in your heart year 'round! Rick Delair.
Brenda almost always had "The A-Team" backing on her recordings with the legendary Buddy Harmon on drums, but on "Rockin", the drummer was Doug Kirkham, another well-known Nashville session player.
This is why I go on RU-vid to hear music. Stories like yours really help me understand how impactful these artists have been over time. My father put me onto a lot of the music from this era. And it's like what you said, they're one of a kind!
With this video's 10th season approaching. I looked at the past decade, the 2010s. The song is always #2 or #3 on the "Holiday Season" chart. It also has sold millions of digital and streaming copies. At some point, the "Hot 100" began to incorporate the digital copies and streaming plays in their calculations and "Rockin'" acheived it's highest position ever on the main chart. It was #9 in 2018. Brenda had a new Top Ten hit, just a mere 60 years after its release!
Happy 78th Bday Brenda! Incidentally, Connie Francis is 85 today, Dec 12. They were the only 2 solo female singers that were consistently on the charts in the early 60s.
This is still one of the top five holiday songs every year. Amazing. If she recorded with someone and somehow got another hit, she would be setting chart records all over the place.
The problem is finding a well-written song. People complain about the singers of today, but I think a bigger problem is songwriting. I rarely hear anything that means anything, so it doesn't stick with me even if it is sung well. This song, for instance, is just a party song, but it still contains the memorable line "in the new old fashioned way" which signaled the transition of music to Rock & Roll.
That hitch in her voice put that song right over the top. Home alone (1) they play that song in that scene when Harry and Marv come back and the house was jumping with Manikins partying to make them think that the McAllisters never left for Paris. I play that song over and over again because I love her voice and the song. I just recently added the song to my iPhone so I could play it through the speakers in my car. 😊
That is what must be done: music platforms must rescue these musical gems, digitize them, "re-record" them and re-release them online, and if possible put them back on sale or enable free downloads. Without discrediting what the Canadian Mariah Carey has done in her time in 1994. And if they make a video with current technology, so much the better. "Old" music also deserves preferential treatment and not treated with contempt. You see, a 65-year-old Christmas song is a consecrated Christmas song for 2023. It is good to know, and it is a consolation, to know that there are still people who value and appreciate good music, no matter how old it may be. and that this should always be done, not only with the songs for Christmas, but for those that are played all year round, as it should be. It's over.
