Ferocious Designs, the music project of central New Jersey-based songwriter Brian Kelley, has released a "The Greatest Love (Christian Beach Remix)" as a single, packaged with new mixes of the previously available "It's Christmas Time Again" and "Merry War on Christmas." All tracks are available now for streaming and download at FerociousDesigns.com. An accompanying lyric video for the single has also been released.

The original version of “The Greatest Love” was written around 1994 and recorded as a demo on a 4-track cassette recorder. An updated version wound up being included on Looking for the Light, the debut full-length album from Ferocious Designs released last March.

The album version includes Kelley’s longtime friend and collaborator Christian Beach on acoustic guitar. “Shortly after the album came out, Christian asked if I’d be interested in sending him stems of one of my songs for a remix so I picked ‘The Greatest Love’ since he played on it,” said Kelley. “And I think he did a fantastic job with it.”

Once the remix was done, the question was what to do with it.

“I’m working on some new stuff for an EP I’m hoping to release in the first half of 2024 and I thought about including it on that, but decided to keep that as all new material,” said Kelley. “So I figured I would just release the remix of ‘The Greatest Love’ along with new mixes of ‘It’s Christmas Time Again’ and ‘Merry War on Christmas’ — both of which were on my 2021 Naughty and Nice: The Holiday Singles release.

“Just seemed like the right time of year to do that,” added Kelley.

Ferocious Designs is the DIY music project of central New Jersey-based songwriter Brian Kelley. Although he has spent most of the past 30-plus years as a songwriting hobbyist, Kelley is not a complete stranger to the New Jersey music scene. He is a longtime collaborator with singer-songwriter Christian Beach, spending time with him during the late 1980s and early 90s in a band that played the much-loved and long-gone Green Parrot Rock Club in Neptune, NJ, multiple times. Kelley has played keyboards, accordion and percussion in Beach's backing band since 2007, and has recorded with him as well. The project name is borrowed from the lyrics of “Cover My Eyes (Pain and Heaven)” by Marillion. The debut, five-song EP from Ferocious Designs, A Matter of Time, was released on July 16, 2021. That same day, the project’s debut single, “Lay It on the Line,” was named Makin Waves Song of the Week by longtime New Jersey music journalist Bob Makin. Looking for the Light, the debut album from Ferocious Designs, was released March 10, 2023.

photo by Brian Kelley