Two years ago, Fearless Records had put out their second Christmas album. They had done this before in 2010, bringing multiple artist onto a single album labeled as ‘Tis The Season To Be Fearless, which had eight songs and featured artists such as The Maine, Artist vs. Poet, and Go Radio. Since the album wasn’t as big as they’d hoped it be, they avoided making one until rather recently.
In November of 2013, they released a new Christmas album labeled Punk Goes Christmas featuring similar artists like All Time Low, Real Friends, New Found Glory, Set It Off and The Summer Set. Because the label used more popular bands than the ones used in ‘Tis the Season to be Fearless, the album sold more copies, roughly 700,000 copies when it first became available. The album even reached number 9 on the Billboard Charts in the US Top Holiday Albums category.
Artists were given the choice of either recording an original song or an already existing Christmas song. Well known songs covered on this album are “Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays”, “This Christmas”, and “Christmas Lights.” Original songs included “Fool’s Holiday” by All Time Low and “I Don’t Wanna Spend Another Christmas Without You” by The Ready Set. One song that stands out on the album is “This Christmas (I’ll Burn It To The Ground)” by Set It Off. When notified they were going to be included on the album they immediately went to work on an original song wanting to stand out and do something completely different. The song is very anti-Christmas and focuses on a character named Jack hating Christmas. Despite the theme of the song it is definitely a song to listen to and enjoy.
On November 27, 2015, Fearless Records released the new updated version of Punk Goes Christmas, titled Punk Goes Christmas: Deluxe Edition. The update includes four new songs, which was an upset due to more people wanting to see more songs added. The new songs were recorded by the artists This Wild Life, August Burns Red, Being As An Ocean, and Jarrod Alonge. The classic song “Sleigh Ride” was performed by This Wild Life, showing off their acoustic skills. August Burns Red added a cover of “Home Alone theme” which makes it the only instrumental song on the album. Being As An Ocean covered the song “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” and made sure to put their own sound into the song. The song starts out as just a normal calming cover of the song, nothing to different from the original, however as the song goes on Being As An Ocean begins screaming some of the lyrics. To some this may not sound pleasing but it is worth listening to if into music that includes screaming or are willing to keep an opened mind while listening. The last artist to add a song is Jarrod Alonge who is known for his comedic personality, he added a song called “12 Days of Pop-Punk Christmas” the song is like “12 Days of Christmas” but lyrics are changed to relate to pop punk fans and to have a good laugh.
The album is directed to fans of pop punk, rock, or metalcore music. It’s an album to listen all throughout December and maybe even after the holidays.
