On this day 66 years ago a teenager became a sensation when her hit I’m Sorry reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts.<\/p>\n
Brenda Lee was already becoming a household name when she delivered her first big ballad – one that helped push her into superstardom.<\/p>\n
“Prior to that we had done Sweet Nothin’s and I had a hit with that, and we had also done Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree, and that became a hit, but it really hadn’t done anything [on the charts] up to that point,” she admitted.<\/p>\n
Brenda Lee Named One of the Greatest Singers of All Time<\/p>\n
Rolling Stone listed Lee as the No. 161 greatest singer of all time<\/a>.<\/p>\n “Lee’s legacy as the first woman to be inducted into both the Country Music and Rock & Roll Halls of Fame speaks for itself. As an 11-year-old, in 1956, she tore into Hank Williams’ Jambalaya (On the Bayou), showing off an already-polished blend of bubblegum sweetness and growling intensity that she’d channel into early hits like That’s All You Gotta Do and Dum Dum,” Rolling Stone wrote.<\/p>\n Her signature song reaching No. 1 inspired fans to listen to her other works.<\/p>\n “So when I’m Sorry came out and became such a huge hit, that made Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree start selling. Then that became a huge, huge hit,” Lee, who was just 16 years old when she hit No. 1, said<\/a>.<\/p>\n “I look back on that now, and it seems pretty amazing. But you know, I had been singing since I was 3 years old, so my love of singing was always there. But I never expected to have a big old record like that. I didn’t really have an agenda for my talent. I just wanted to be able to sing. That I had those hits was the icing on the cake,” she said.<\/p>\n Lee admitted that if she didn’t perform the iconic song her audiences would be “upset.”<\/p>\n Related: 1956 Classic, Turned Down by John Wayne, Named One of the Greatest Westerns of All Time<\/a><\/p>\n This story was originally published by Men’s Journal<\/a> on Jul 18, 2026, where it first appeared in the News<\/a> section. Add Men’s Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On this day 66 years ago a teenager became a sensation when her hit I’m Sorry reached No.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[105721,235858,321,93,61,60,235859,26218],"class_list":["post-557843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-billboard-charts","tag-brenda-lee","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-rockin39-around-the-christmas-tree","tag-rolling-stone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}