Brenda Lee attends the CMA Awards at Nashville’s Bridgestone Area on Nov. 8. Her vacation hit “Rockin’ Across the Christmas Tree” has reached No. 1 on the Billboard Sizzling 100, 65 years after its debut.

Jason Kempin/Getty Photos

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Jason Kempin/Getty Photos

Brenda Lee attends the CMA Awards at Nashville’s Bridgestone Area on Nov. 8. Her vacation hit “Rockin’ Across the Christmas Tree” has reached No. 1 on the Billboard Sizzling 100, 65 years after its debut.

Jason Kempin/Getty Photos

This week’s No. 1 tune on the Billboard Sizzling 100 is one you have most likely heard earlier than — time and again. For many years. “Rockin’ Across the Christmas Tree”— sung by Brenda Lee, and first launched 65 years in the past, throughout the Eisenhower administration — has gone to No. 1 on the singles chart, for the primary time ever.

“Rockin’ Across the Christmas Tree” was written by Johnny Marks — who, as a part of a lengthy, nice custom of American Christmas songwriters, was himself truly Jewish. (Marks additionally wrote “Rudolph the Pink-Nosed Reindeer” and “A Holly Jolly Christmas.”) Lee recorded the tune when she was simply 13 years previous, not lengthy after she signed a contract with Decca Data.

Since its 1958 debut, this Yuletide traditional has grow to be a staple on vacation playlists. It is a sunny, up-tempo, broadly secular tune, excellent for offering cheerful atmosphere. However there are a couple of extra particular causes it has been capable of attain the highest spot this yr.

Again in 2018, Billboard reconfigured its chart calculation formulation, giving extra weight to streams (and particularly to streams made on subscription or paid-tier companies). That meant that catalog recordings — whether or not launched a yr earlier or many years in the past — would have extra of an opportunity to chart alongside new materials, since listeners are prone to stream previous favorites time and again.

That impact has been particularly notable throughout the vacation season, when artists have typically shunned dropping huge new releases — and when extra listeners flip to a shared physique of communally well-loved songs.

These chart modifications had an affect on the vacation music panorama straight away. In December 2018, Mariah Carey’s “All I Need for Christmas Is You” went to No. 6 on the Sizzling 100 — the best place it had ever reached on the singles chart. (When it debuted in 1994, Columbia Data did not hassle to launch the tune as a industrial single in any bodily format, so because of the chart guidelines of the time, it wasn’t eligible.)

Since then, “All I Need for Christmas Is You” has grow to be the perennial star atop the Sizzling 100 every vacation season. It went to No. 1 for the primary time in 2019, and continued that streak for the following three years. (Simply behind it: one “Rockin’ Across the Christmas Tree,” peaking yearly at No. 2 between 2019 and 2022. Earlier than this previous decade, “Rockin’ ” had peaked at No. 14 on the Sizzling 100 — in 1960.)

This yr, to mark the sixty fifth anniversary of “Rockin’ Across the Christmas Tree,” Lee, who turns 79 subsequent week, has made an extra-big push to assist it climb all the best way up the chart — previous Mariah Carey. She recorded the tune’s first official video, which options cameo appearances by Tanya Tucker and Trisha Yearwood and has grow to be successful on TikTok, garnering 8 million views and counting.

Trailing Lee on the Sizzling 100 this week is Carey, adopted by Jack Harlow’s “Lovin On Me” and two different deep-catalog vacation classics: Bobby Helms’ recording of “Jingle Bell Rock” and Wham!’s “Final Christmas.” However with the highest spot to herself, Brenda Lee has lastly obtained her vacation want.