A Spanish version of Brenda Lee‘s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” created with artificial intelligence — and with Lee’s approval — is here just in time for the holiday season.
The new version, titled “Noche Buena y Navidad,” was produced by Grammy winner Aureo Baqueiro, who kept the original music and background vocals from the original version but replaced Lee’s lead vocals with a new Spanish-language vocal created with SoundLab’s AI MicDrop tool. It was released Friday.
This audio plug-in, which allows a person to transform their voice into another person’s voice, makes it appear as though Lee was back in the recording booth at age 13 singing the song in Spanish.
A press release from Universal Music Group credits “an innovative use of responsibly-trained AI technology” for helping create “Noche Buena y Navidad.”
“I am so blown away by this new Spanish version of ‘Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree,’ which was created with the help of AI,” Lee said in a press release.
“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,” she continued. “To have this out now is pretty incredible and I’m happy to introduce the song to fans in a new way.”
Lee’s iconic Christmas song, released 66 years ago, hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart last year.
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