Interesting, sure, nice vocals (the guys sounds just like Dino) but that video? :eek:
Hardly canon.
For those who haven’t heard it, here’s Margaret Whiting and Johnny Mercer doing it just right. 
Gotta agree with this one. If anything the complaining minority may just have been louder and more insistent precisely because they are not gaining as much traction as easily and swiftly as they think they should and people insist on keeping recording it. Yet it’s not like it’s an all-pervasive part of everyone’s playlist anyway.
But yes, there is an issue in the performances in that it seems hard to get a team that are both on the same page, so to speak. I suppose it’s one of the pitfalls of a “standard”.
Now I keep imagining a version of the song…would probably have to be a video…where the song is date rapey as hell. I guess there would be bonus points if the vocals were at the “innocent” end of the spectrum and the video at the other end.
Personally, I would like to have this song banned. Not because it’s un-PC, I totally agree with the OP’s argument, but because this song has been so done to death – even for a ‘seasonal’ song – that I can not stand to hear it anymore.
“Santa Baby” too. Eartha Kitt’s original was inspired, naughty fun. But for the love of God that song has been covered ad nauseum by every damn third-rate cocktail lounge singer for the past 50+ years. Give it an effing BREAK for a couple of years!
So, Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer it is!
I wonder whether some people’s opinion of the song might change if they heard a gender-reversed version … or a same-sex version.
You all sound like a bunch of southerners defending the Confederate Flag. “You are are whiners! PC! PC! Help! I’m being oppressed!”
Are you sure you don’t need safe spaces?
Yes, this is it! Thank you, I didn’t imagine it.
I wonder if the various people covering this avoid doing it in this style, first of all because they want to make their own imprint on the song, but also because they think this kind of “talk-singing” sounds too old-fashioned. But it’s crucial to what exactly this is, which is not simply a “song” in the general sense. It’s a comedy bit, almost an audio sketch.
ETA: Funny that this is lumped in with Xmas music. There’s a dearth of songs for Valentine’s Day, which is after all at a very cold time of year.
I like that one!
If Lady Gaga was throwing herself at me like that version, I’d stay…
As I said in the other thread, I don’t think having a conversation about the lyrics is without value.
I am not offended by the song, I don’t think it should be banned, I don’t want the lyrics changed, and I fully and completely get that it is a cute, charming song about flirtation and completely consensual imminent sex, which really was an empowering perspective at the time – acknowledging the ridiculousness of a woman’s natural sexual desires being dampened by oppressive societal expectations. Awesome.
My only issue with the song is that because of the fact that sometimes (as here) a woman who says no is in fact coyly inviting further encouragement, there are some men who think that is always the case when they hear a no. Holding up a song like this as a pinnacle of adorable flirtatious banter can make what is already a grey area even less clear, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying so. Do I think that song is the sole reason for any miscommunications between men and women? Of course not. I just don’t think it hurts anyone to be reminded of that, that’s all.
It’s probably easy to misinterpret anything, but I agree with Maurie. I never questioned the lyrics until a Maclean’s magazine writer mocked them.
Fair point, Maurie.
My personal favorite version is Lou Rawls and Dianne Reeves’ take. IMO, they nail the chops/tone perfectly.
You mean like the version where it won an Oscar for Best Original Song in the musical Neptune’s Daughter? (Which takes place in summer in Florida - so it most definitely is not cold outside.)
ETA: they did the song twice in that film - with genders flipped. The link shows both.
Vox has an article Why “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” became an annual controversy about date rape and consent that beats the song into the ground in several thousand words. My summary of the article is simply “millennial idiots don’t understand context or history.”
Now it’s obviously true that many women have felt pressured into unwanted sex. That was as true in 1944 as it is today. It’s also true that seduction is a real human interaction that exists today as much as it did in 1944. By definition, seduction is not pressure. When a word is redefined to mean its opposite, then context is no longer meaningful. You can make 0 = 1 or turn any situation into a nightmare.
As proof, I offer the modernized version by Lydia Liza and Josiah Lemanski embedded on that page. I can see why "Writing for the Federalist, Bre Payton skewered the rewrite as the ‘unsexiest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life.’” Of course it is. Seduction is, again by definition, sexy. Removing all the seduction from a song that is solely about seduction - on both sides, I have to emphasize - makes it ridiculous. Nobody in their right minds would write a song with the lyrics they sing outside of a training film in a human relations sex in the workplace class. Worse, the rewritten song diminishes women. By changing only the male lyrics they reaffirm the canard that females are incapable of seduction or of sexiness and think of men only as animate vibrators.
I keep making the point that context is everything. Never more than here.
Or the Key and Peele version.
Here’s a question: have there been any major stagings or performances of this song where it was clear that the singers and/or director DID think the female part’s objections were sincere?
That version sounds like he’s trying to get her to leave and she won’t take the hint.