The Offspring get into the Christmas spirit early with Bells Will Be Ringing

A photo of The Offsrping singer Dexter Holland, digitally modified to include a Santa hat on his head — (Image credit: The Offspring/Tijs van Leur)

The Offspring have released a Christmas single based on Charles Brown's 1960 holiday classic Please Come Home For Christmas.

Bells Will Be Ringing (Please Come Home For Christmas) is The Offspring's second Christmas song, following on from 2020's Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), a cover of Darlene Love's 1963 hit.

The band say: "We’ve always loved the classic Charles Brown version of this song and think it’s really underappreciated. We thought it would be the perfect follow up to Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), and continuing on the 'coming home for Christmas' theme."

It's not the first time pianist Charles Brown's song has been covered by a rock act. The Eagles released a version in 1978, and Jon Bon Jovi covered it in 1992.

The Offspring released their 10th album, Let The Bad Times Roll, last year. Also in 2021, they fired drummer Pete Parada after he decided not to get vaccinated against Covid-19.

Although the band didn't comment on their decision to part ways with Parada, it wasn't a huge surprise. They had been vocal in encouraging fans to get vaccinated, even posting a tweaked version of their 1994 hit single Come Out And Play on social media. The tweaked version included the line “You gotta go get vaccinated.”

The Offspring will be featured in the Punk Rock Museum, opening in Las Vegas in early 2023. Investors in the project include Epitaph Records and Bad Religion founder Brett Guerwitz, Germs/Nirvana/Foo Fighters guitarist Pat Smear, Blink-182's Mark Hoppus, Rancid's Tim Armstrong, Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman and skate legend Tony Hawk.

Packages for the museum are available on the official website.

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.