Watch Brenda Lee's 'Noche Buena y Navidad' Animated Video

11-15-2024

(UMe) Brenda Lee's "Noche Buena y Navidad," the new Spanish adaptation of her iconic holiday hit, "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree," soundtracks the myriad ways Christmas is celebrated across Latin America and amongst Latine families in the U.S. in the charming new video created by Fantoons, the renowned animation studio co-founded by Venezuelan-born, U.S.-based writer and director, David Calcano, and producer, Linda Otero.

Throughout the festive, colorful clip, viewers are taken on a Christmas Eve bike ride that begins below the equator in the summer, traveling through beautiful Latin American towns in Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala and El Salvador, before transitioning to winter and heading north to Mexico and Miami in the United States, all along the way showcasing the many Noche Buena traditions of Spanish speaking people all over the world. The video culminates with Brenda Lee performing "Noche Buena y Navidad" on stage in Los Angeles.

Many of the foods and specialties eaten in the various regions when celebrating with loved ones on Christmas Eve are highlighted throughout the cultural melting pot, including handmade tamales, pan de jamón, asado and Ponche Navide-o, a traditional Mexican punch made of guava, tejocote, Opal apple, cane sugar, prunes, cinnamon and tamarind. The Easter Egg-laden video is filled with cassette tape imagery throughout as a nod to how holiday music was traditionally shared in Latin America and Latine culture on mezcladitos or mixtapes for family and friends.

"Noche Buena y Navidad" was refreshed under the production of acclaimed four-time Latin GRAMMY Award-winning producer, Auero Baqueiro, keeping the original music and background vocals while replacing Lee's original lead vocals with a newly translated Spanish language vocal, created using a new AI vocal model, derived from Brenda Lee's voice that has been fully approved by her.

The result is a new version of the familiar and cherished holiday classic that sounds as if 13-year-old Brenda Lee was in the booth, singing it for the first time.

The track's new vocal was created with the help of SoundLabs AI's MicDrop, a cutting-edge AI audio plug-in which allows a user to transform their voice into another voice or instrument. In partnership with UMG, SoundLabs is creating official ultra-high fidelity vocal models for artists, using their own voice data for training while giving them full artistic approval and control of the output.

"Noche Buena y Navidad" is the first collaboration with a UMG artist to be released and marks the first time that a music company has used ethically trained AI to release a new language version of a classic song, created responsibly with the artist's involvement and authorization.

"I am so blown away by this new Spanish version of 'Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree,' which was created with the help of AI," says Brenda Lee. "Throughout my career, I performed and recorded many songs in different languages, but I never recorded 'Rockin'' in Spanish, which I would have loved to do. To have this out now is pretty incredible and I'm happy to introduce the song to fans in a new way."

Last holiday season, "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree" was the No. 1 song in the U.S. for three weeks, topping the Billboard Hot 100 chart more than half a century after it was recorded and released in 1958, by the then 13-year-old star.