Diane Keaton Earns First Solo Entry on a Billboard Music Chart Following Her Death at 79

Beloved actress Diane Keaton, who died on Oct. 11 at age 79, makes her Billboard music chart debut under her own billing this week with her holiday single, “First Christmas.” The track bows at No. 22 on the Digital Song Sales chart (dated Oct. 25).

Upon the release of the song on Nov. 29, 2024, the Academy Award-winner wrote on her Instagram: “This morning, my heart is filled with gratitude for each and every one of you. The love you’ve given my debut holiday single, ‘First Christmas,’ has been the most beautiful gift I could ever imagine. Your comments, your stories, and the way you’ve shared your own ‘First Christmas’ journeys have touched me deeply. It reminds me of the peace we find in the love and memories we hold close. When we share these together, we are never alone.”

“First Christmas” was written by Grammy Award winners Carole Bayer Sager and Jonas Myrin, and produced by Myrin. After Keaton’s passing, Myrin wrote on Instagram: “I’m heartbroken by (Diane Keaton’s) passing. To have been trusted to help bring her lifelong dream of recording an original song to life is something I’ll carry with me forever.”

In “First Christmas,” Keaton sings in its chorus, “The snow falls on my window, I wish that I could let go, it’s a silent night, it’s another year, the first Christmas without you here.”

Before “First Christmas” brought Keaton to a Billboard music chart as a solo vocalist, she appeared on Billboard’s now-defunct film charts from the 1980s through the 2000s; the lists tracked the top films being sold and rented in the United States on home video.

Although Keaton was best known as a four-time Oscar-nominated actress on the big screen, she had her hand in some iconic music and chart moments since the late ‘60s. In 1968, she was in the original Broadway cast of the musical Hair, and performed on its cast album. Marking her first contribution to a No. 1 title, the set topped the Billboard 200 for 13 weeks in 1969. (Hair remains the most recent cast recording to lead the list.) In 1987, Keaton directed the official music video for Belinda Carlisle’s Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit “Heaven Is a Place on Earth,” and the video for its follow-up single “I Get Weak,” which reached No. 2 on the Hot 100 in 1988. In 1996, Keaton co-starred with Goldie Hawn and Bette Midler in The First Wives Club and the trio memorably closed the film with a performance of Lesley Gore’s No. 2-peaking Hot 100 hit from 1964, “You Don’t Own Me.”

In more recent years, Keaton acted in the music video for Justin Bieber’s “Ghost” in 2021, a single that reached No. 5 on the Hot 100 that year. In 2023, Keaton went viral on social media when she filmed herself dancing to Miley Cyrus’ Hot 100 No. 1 that year, “Flowers,” and later called Cyrus her “favorite artist” of 2023.