Why “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” is finally Billboard’s No. 1 song.

This installment of “Why Is This Song No. 1?” is momentous for at least a couple of reasons. First, as of this month, this Slate series is 10 years old. We launched it in December 2013 with an entry on the Eminem–Rihanna duet “The Monster” (not an auspicious kickoff song—it’s neither artist’s best chart-topper—but the hits got better from there). Second, the best gift I could have received for my 10-year Slate column anniversary is a Hot 100 topper that is musically superb, sets a historic chart record, defies normal pop logic, reveals something magical about how the charts work … and that I somehow, amazingly, predicted would reach No. 1. Merry Christmas, Brenda Lee—and congratulations to both of us. “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” a 1958 recording that never cracked the Top 10 in its day, is now, 65 years later, the No. 1 song in America. In December 2021, I did a whole episode of my Slate podcast Hit Parade about the performers behind holiday chestnuts, an episode that was themed around the possibility that Brenda Lee might pull this off. And now, even earlier than I forecast, it’s happened. As with Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” which belatedly reached No. 1 four years ago, a mix of very 21st-century factors—streaming, video, playlisting—brought about Lee’s chart feat. In the process, Lee sets all sorts of new Hot 100 milestones. For starters, taking six and a half decades to reach No. 1 makes “Rockin’ ” the slowest-climbing chart-topper ever, surpassing the mere quarter-century it took Carey’s 1994 recording to reach the top. More impressive, Brenda Lee, 78 and still rockin’, becomes the oldest living person to score a No. 1 song in America, surpassing in one fell swoop previous female record-holder Cher, who rang the bell with “Believe” in 1999 at age 52, and the prior all-genders record-holder Louis Armstrong, who was 62 when his take on “Hello, Dolly” hit No. 1 in 1964. This is also not Lee’s first No. 1 song—in late 1960, as a teen idol, she topped the chart with “I Want to Be Wanted.” And therein lies another record: The 63 years between “Wanted” and “Rockin’ ” give Lee the longest gap between career chart-toppers, again beating (more than doubling) Cher, who went 25 years between “Dark Lady” and “Believe.” Here’s the craziest footnote of all: Lee is the Hot 100’s first-ever septuagenarian chart-topper, but with a song she recorded at age 13. I don’t know what you call that—it’s so unprecedented, it’s not really a benchmark we chart nerds track—but let’s agree to call this the Hot 100’s biggest artist timewarp: some kind of reverse–Marty McFly feat of chart science. (You know that new sound you’ve been looking for? Well, listen to this!!) Though Lee is a certified legend—the only woman inducted into both the Rock & Roll and Country Music Halls of Fame—she is not blasé about this week’s good news. If I may borrow a little Yiddish for Hanukkah, I dare you not to get a little verklempt when watching this low-tech video of an overwhelmed, humbled Lee finding out she’s top of the pops. A bit about our latest Hot 100 commander: Brenda Mae Tarpley, born into deep poverty in Atlanta in 1944, began singing professionally as young as 5 and appearing on television at 10. Between those two milestones, her father died when Brenda was 8, making her the family’s breadwinner. By age 11, she had adopted the stage name Brenda Lee and was signed to Decca Records. Lee never grew taller than 4-foot-9—so when, at age 12, she recorded the cracking rockabilly song “Dynamite,” the industry nicknamed Brenda “Little Miss Dynamite.” Even at that tender age, Lee was a spitfire. Her singles, like the telephone-number song “Bigelow 6-200,” had remarkable grit. At a time when Queen of Rockabilly Wanda Jackson was revolutionizing the role of women in both rock ’n’ roll and country, Lee was doing much the same, nearly a decade younger. “One Step at a Time” garnered airplay on both Top 40 and country radio in 1957. Lee finally had her major breakthrough at the end of 1959 with “Sweet Nothin’s,” a remarkably self-assured single that made both the Hot 100 (No. 4) and even the R&B chart (No. 12). And it opened very memorably, with Lee cooing, “UH-HUH, honey …” (If that opening sounds familiar to 21st-century ears, that’s because Kanye West sampled it on “Bound 2,” his schmoopy 2013 ode to future wife Kim Kardashian.) By the start of the ’60s, Brenda Lee was established as a teen idol, at a time when most teen idols were boys. She parlayed that image into her first chart-topping hit, the unrequited-love weeper “I’m Sorry.” Produced by the legendary Nashville producer Owen Bradley, pioneer of the “countrypolitan” sound made famous by Patsy Cline, “I’m Sorry” topped the Hot 100 in July 1960. Three months later, Brenda Lee had her second No. 1, an adaptation of the Italian song “Per Tutta la Vita” that was anglicized as “I Want to Be Wanted.” Striking while the iron was hot, Decca chose late 1960 to rerelease a single Lee had recorded back when she was 13 and that had flopped during the holiday seasons of both 1958 and 1959. Now that Lee was famous, they figured they’d have better luck. It was not only produced by Owen Bradley, it was written by Johnny Marks, the same man who’d penned “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “A Holly Jolly Christmas.” Marks wrote “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” specifically for Lee, giving it teen-idol energy—the song opens with lyrics about a “Christmas party hop”—and a rockabilly sound that was both country-friendly and pop-conversant. As usual, Lee’s sassy voice was wise beyond her years. Rereleased in November 1960, “Rockin’ ” finally cracked the Top 40, peaking at No. 14 in a brief four-week chart run. Between 1960 and ’63, Brenda Lee strung together a near-unbroken streak of a dozen Top 10 singles that blended the ascendant modes of girl-group, countrypolitan, and teen pop, all before her 20th birthday—classics like “Fool #1,” “You Can Depend on Me,” and “Break It to Me Gently.” This run made Lee a bigger chart titan than we remember today. According to chart historian Joel Whitburn, the top five pop acts of the 1960s, based on Hot 100 performance, were the Beatles, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Brenda Lee, and the Supremes. After Lee scored her final (new) Top 40 pop hit in 1967 with “Ride Ride Ride,” she pivoted seamlessly to country music, scoring hits like “Nobody Wins” (No. 5 country, 1973) and “Big Four Poster Bed” (No. 4 country, 1974). She collaborated with the Oak Ridge Boys, Willie Nelson, and in 1984, on her last major hit, with country legend George Jones. So: Brenda Lee was an affirmed legend before age 60, before digital music, and before streaming rebooted the charts, making it possible for holiday hits to go much higher on the Hot 100 than they ever had before. It’s only in the 21st century—and really, only the last five to 10 years—that holiday songs have achieved chart peaks commensurate with their cultural stature. The top five pop acts of the 1960s, based on Hot 100 performance, were the Beatles, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Brenda Lee, and the Supremes. To explain how this happened, I need to briefly recap the chart arcana I explained when Mariah Carey scored her belated ho-ho-holiday topper in 2019. Before the digital era, Christmas music was a bad fit for the charts. These songs are played very intensively for only four to six weeks per year. That window wasn’t long enough for the old physical-goods system to reflect just how popular seasonal hits are. Again, at its original peak, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” only charted four weeks, peaking at No. 14. That was pretty typical for a holiday song in those days; at the height of the Four Seasons’ fame in 1962, they issued a falsetto-laden cover of “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town,” and it peaked at a modest No. 23 on the Hot 100, in a three-week chart run. Right through the end of the 20th century, holiday music charted poorly. In 1984–85, Band-Aid’s charity megasingle “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” only reached No. 13 in America, and Wham’s now-cherished “Last Christmas” didn’t chart at all. In the case of Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” several changes in Billboard methodology made its coronation possible…

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