The new Spanish language version is fully authorized by Lee
Brenda Lee’s iconic holiday hit, “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree,” first recorded 66 years ago, has been released in Spanish for the first time, thanks to an innovative use of responsibly-trained AI technology.
“Noche Buena y Navidad” was refreshed under the production of acclaimed four-time Latin Grammy Award-winning producer Auero Baqueiro. The original music and background vocals were kept while Lee’s original lead vocals were replaced with a newly translated Spanish-language vocal created using a new AI vocal model derived from her voice that has been fully approved by Lee.
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 that 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.
Earlier this year, Universal Music Group (UMG) entered into a groundbreaking strategic partnership with SoundLabs, an innovative new AI technology company founded by Grammy-nominated producer, composer, software developer, and electronic artist BT.
“Noche Buena y Navidad” is the first collaboration with a UMG artist to be released and marks the first time 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 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.”
This past summer, UMe, the global catalog division of UMG, proposed the idea of creating “Noche Buena y Navidad” for release for the holidays. As the legendary Rock and Roll and Country Music Hall of Famer enjoyed singing her songs in different languages throughout her illustrious seven-decade career, including French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish, Lee provisionally approved the request. She approved its release upon hearing it and marveling at how authentic it sounds.
The process was much more involved than one might realize and featured a team of accomplished music professionals from across the spectrum to bring the idea to life. Four-time Latin Grammy-winning producer and songwriter, Auero Baqueiro, was enlisted to help produce “Noche Buena y Navidad.” His first step was to adapt the lyrics from English to Spanish, capturing the essence of the original and ensuring that the lyrics, phonetics and rhyming structure felt natural to the Spanish language. Leyla Hoyle, a Chilean-born, LA-based Latin vocalist was then brought in to sing the vocals in Spanish while mimicking Lee’s unique vocal patterns – matching pitch, tone breaths and phrasings of the original recording.
Next, Baqueiro delivered the Spanish vocal stem to SoundLabs, who was provided hours of isolated vocal stems from Lee’s UMG archives to create a unique bespoke AI vocal model based on her voice, including the original version of “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree,” which was recorded when she was 13 years old. Hoyle’s Spanish vocal was then put through the “Brenda Lee” vocal AI model (built leveraging the MicDrop technology), which modified the Spanish vocal to sound like Lee’s voice. Lastly, Baqueiro mixed the AI-created Spanish vocal into the original music bed.
The result is the new Spanish version, Noche Buena y Navidad, which harnesses the creative capabilities of ethical AI and demonstrates how AI can expand the horizons of artistry while being respectful of artists and used with their full authorization.
“This project was a tremendously exciting showcase for MicDrop, our real-time voice-to-voice plugin,” says SoundLabs founder, BT. “Training a model based on the 13-year-old Brenda Lee, using original masters, was both a rewarding challenge and a creative breakthrough. We’re thrilled with how this technology breathes new life into a beloved Christmas classic, blending innovation with tradition in a truly human way.”
SoundLabs’ goals is to place powerful new compositional tools at artists’ fingertips, while supporting proper management of their intellectual property. SoundLabs was founded with a foundational respect for intellectual property rights and is focused on helping artists retain creative control over their data and models.
UMG supports bipartisan legislation introduced in the U.S. Congress to protect individuals’ voice and visual likeness from unauthorized computer-generated recreations, using generative AI and other technologies, like deepfakes and voice/image clones. The bill, known as the NO FAKES Act (S. 4875 in the Senate and H.R. 9551 in the U.S. House of Representatives) has overwhelming support from a broad swath across the creative community. Recently, Brenda Lee joined hundreds of artists, songwriters, and other creators supporting the legislation in an open letter published by the Human Artistry Campaign, the global organization backing Responsible AI.
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.
