We’ve come up with a super cool idea for the Christmas season that I think everyone will be able to get behind.

Starting on Saturday, Dec. 14 and ending on Wednesday, Dec. 25, we’ll be announcing one super-popular and/or famous song per day, to be released as a pack on the 25th. This project, which will co-exist with the actual Christmas-themed pack, will be a mix between an advent calendar and The Twelve Days of Christmas. It will keep our users engaged every day, will be full of holiday flavor without actually being Christmas-themed, and will help us fill a few more holes in the list of famous songs not already in Rock Band.

Here’s some specifics and clarifications:

• We’ll be making a little advent calendar image with twelve numbered doors. Each day, starting on the 14th, a very short blog post will reveal one of the songs and replace one of the doors with album art. The actual pack will be released on Christmas Day, which gives everyone working on the pack plenty of time to work on their song no matter which day it’s revealed on.
• Each blog post will have your song and a very short blurb written by you about the song, maybe something about C3, maybe something about yourself as an author. We’ll figure this out as we get closer.
• One song per author, if we can manage it. The themes of this release are collaboration and, like, “gifting” — each of us is giving a personal gift of a famous song to the community at large.
• ALL SONGS MUST BE EXCEPTIONALLY FAMOUS, POPULAR, AND/OR OFTEN-REQUESTED! Basically, if it wasn’t in the top 50 or so of the Billboard chart at some point, forget about it. Good examples: Any hits by classic rock artists we don’t have or barely have (The Rolling Stones, Prince, Bruce Springsteen), any of the big ’90s one-hit wonders, or songs that are huge on the radio right now. Bad examples: B-sides or “lesser” singles by artists we already have, a song you really personally like but isn’t famous or popular (i.e. I might want to do another Mother Mother song, but few people would care except me), almost all comedy songs (the only Weird Al song that would qualify for this pack is The Saga Begins)…you get the idea. We’ll approve or deny songs as a community in this thread. Basically, if you have a “big” song on your list of earmarked songs, now is the time.
• Order will be randomly selected by default. If we have one huge song that towers over the others, it will be saved for the 25th, and if you really want a particular day, we can probably make it happen. Otherwise, I’ll use random.org to ensure that we’re not playing favorites.
• If more than 12 authors sign up, we’ll either extend the window or have the final day be a multi-reveal. If fewer than 12 authors sign up, we’ll either reduce the window or allow people to author multiple songs (though neither of these is ideal).
• If you have a song that’s already scheduled that you’d like to move to this pack, that’s fine.

Here’s the current list of participants (in no particular order):

• farottone: Culture Club – “Karma Chameleon”
• pksage: Harvey Danger – “Flagpole Sitta”
• TrojanNemo: Queen – “Innuendo”
• Nightmare Lyre: Semisonic – “Closing Time”
• AddyMilldike: Pitbull – “Hey Baby (Drop It to the Floor) (ft. T-Pain)”
• Gigakoops: Tool – “Eulogy”
• Nyxyxylyth: The Chordettes – “Mr. Sandman”
• BearzUnlimited: Radiohead – “Paranoid Android”
• DVDSmith: Bon Jovi – “Always”
• drummerockband: Tegan and Sara – “Closer”
• jaychuck: Lorde – “Royals”
• DeathThreatUK: Nightwish – “Wishmaster”

We hope that you guys will be as hyped for this idea as we are!