On a brand new episode of Q with Tom Power, the podcast host sat down with Brenda Lee, the voice of the iconic holiday song “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” which turns 65 this year.
During their conversation, Brenda told Tom about recording that song at just 13 years old, and how having the song in Home Alone changed its popularity, and more.
Just as successful as Johny Cash, Elvis Presley and The Beatles, Brenda is an honored inductee of both The Country Music Hall of Fame and The Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame. Starting her career at a really young age, performing since she was just a kid of 11 years old, Brenda has sold over 100 million records and had 46 Hot 100 singles.
Brenda shared, “it was brought to Owen Bradley, my producer, by the writer, Johnny Marks,” about the now iconic Christmas track. “Owen just thought it’d be great to do a Christmas song that was really really good and he really believed in that one,” she added. “And I loved it, and we did it, and it just laid around a while, and then all of a sudden it was in the movie Home Alone, and then it just shot up the charts."
And by a while, she means a while. The festive song originally released in 1958, and Home Alone was released in 1990. Not an immediate hit, Brenda talked about how the song “certainly wasn’t what it became, it didn’t right off the bat go up the charts.”
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But one day she got a phone call, with the voice on the other end asking her if she’d seen the movie Home Alone, “They said you need to go see it,” Brenda shared, “you’re song is all over it. And that’s where ‘Rockin’’ got a big big boost.”
Despite of all this success, the singer maintained a relatively normal life, and even the boost of the song admittedly didn’t change her life at all. “I was just doing what I loved to do, and that was to sing.”
To hear the entire conversation, listen to the episode above.