At 78, Brenda Lee steals the spotlight from Mariah Carey with a 1950s Christmas song

Mariah Carey has competition. His song All I Want For Christmas Is You has just lost a place on the Hot 100 Billboard chart, the weekly ranking of sales, listenings and broadcasts of songs in the United States, and is in second place, behind Brenda Lee, country singer of 78 years old. Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree just shot to the top of the chart for the first time since its release in 1958. “It’s fabulous, wow! After all these years, Mr. Marks (Johnny Marks, author of the song and friend of Brenda Lee who died in 1985) would be so proud,” reacted the 78-year-old singer, moved to tears at the time of the announcement by Billboard .

Brenda Lee had already reached the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart twice since the latter's inception in 1958. Her songs I Want To Be Wanted and I'm Sorry had held the top spot on the chart in 1960. That was four years since Mariah Carey occupied the top spot on the Billboard charts during this same period.

Although Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree had never reached number one on the Hot 100 before, the song had several lives. In 1990, the song appeared in Mom I Missed the Plane, a successful film which would become a must-see for Christmas parties, and which would give a new lease of life to Brenda Lee's song. In November, the song was even entitled to a music video, which to date has nearly four million views on YouTube. On Spotify, the song is approaching one billion plays with a total of 945 million plays (counted when a person listens to the song one or more times for at least 30 seconds) on the platform.

It remains to be seen whether the song by Brenda Lee, who will celebrate her 80th birthday on Monday, will stay at the top of the podium for the long term. For Billboard, the hypothesis seems credible since the media noise of this exploit will lead to an increase in listeners of the song.