This 78-year-old pushes Mariah Carey from the top spot among the Christmas hits

When Brenda Lee learned she was number one on the US Billboard charts on December 5, she had to wipe a few tears from her face. She is 78, she first performed “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” when she was 13. It was not a success then, now, 65 years later, she replaces Mariah Carey and “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” Second place.

It is the biggest success of the older lady who became famous with country and rock ‘n’ roll. In 2022, the order between her and Carey was reversed. The lively Christmas classic was written by Johnny Marks and ‘Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ is also thanks to him.

Brenda Lee from Atlanta, Georgia has been on stage since she was three years old. Five years later, her father died in an accident on a construction site. At the age of ten, Brenda was the sole breadwinner of her entire family and later even enabled her siblings to study. “I gave up my youth for my career,” she says.

Her many hits also include “Sweet Nothin’s” and the ballads “All Alone Am I” and “I’m Sorry”, as well as some arrangements of more melancholic Edith Piaf chansons. Her voice was always a world ahead of her years in pain and tickle; everyone who heard the teenager sing thought she was at least thirty.

Or as one critic wrote more than fifty years ago: “She could be fantastic. She evoked a three o’clock morning atmosphere, ashtrays full of cigarette butts and lipstick stains on the coffee cups, small, stuffy rooms, despair.” A voice “like bad whiskey.”

A month ago, the 5-foot-10, whiskey-voiced singer made a new video, a clip of which ended up on TikTok — the rest is a Christmas story.

(SME)