Vince Guaraldi’s soundtrack to the 1975 animated TV special Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown, debuts across an array of Billboard album charts (dated Feb. 1), including top 10 arrivals on Jazz Albums, Traditional Jazz Albums and Indie Store Album Sales. It also takes a bow on the Kid Albums and Top Album Sales charts.
This is the first time the complete soundtrack to the special has been released, as only select tracks from the program have been released previously.
Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown marked the 13th animated Peanuts special, and premiered on CBS-TV on Jan. 28, 1975. It garnered an Emmy Award nomination for outstanding children’s special.
The soundtrack was issued nearly 50 years to the day after the program’s debut – as the album arrived on Jan. 17, 2025. The 30-track album was released via streaming services, as well as to purchase as a digital download, CD and across three vinyl variants (a standard black vinyl, plus a red-colored edition and pink-colored edition).
Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown enters at No. 7 on Traditional Jazz Albums, No. 9 on the overall Jazz Albums ranking, No. 9 on Indie Store Album Sales, No. 18 on Kid Albums and No. 48 on Top Album Sales. The set earned a little over 2,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending Jan. 23, according to Luminate, with nearly all of that sum driven by traditional album sales.
Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown is the latest in a series of from-the-vaults Peanuts soundtrack releases Lee Mendelson Film Productions, the company that produced more than 50 Peanuts animated specials. In recent years, the studio has released Guaraldi’s companion albums to You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown; It Was a Short Summer, Charlie Brown and A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.
The first Peanuts animated special, 1965’s A Charlie Brown Christmas, launched the evergreen soundtrack album of the same name from Vince Guaraldi Trio. That set has spent more than 100 nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Kid Albums chart and has visited the top 40 of the all-genre Billboard 200 in every holiday season for the last 10 years.
