It’s supposed to be a sad song. The original original version was even more of a downer!
Maybe you could hear the snitchiness in his voice? *“Ives was identified in the 1950 pamphlet Red Channels and blacklisted as an entertainer with supposed Communist ties. In 1952, he cooperated with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and agreed to testify. Ives’ statement to the HUAC ended his blacklisting, allowing him to continue acting in movies, but it also led to a bitter rift between Ives and many folk singers, including Pete Seeger, who accused Ives of naming names and betraying the cause of cultural and political freedom to save his own career. Forty-one years later, Ives, by then confined to a wheelchair, reunited with Seeger during a benefit concert in New York City. They sang “Blue Tail Fly” together. Others who were not able to continue working after Ives’ testimony put them on the blacklist for more than a decade were far less forgiving.”
*
Yes!! I hate this song with a passion.
Yes!!! I so despise this song!
LOL, I sang in several choruses over the years and have to say that those lyrics are not fun to sing either.
LOL!
LOL!
I do like Christmas but it’s a relief to know that these songs are off the radio or the loops in the store until next year!
Can’t get all the baby it’s cold outside hate. It is a really gorgeous song, melody and harmony.
That’s what I’m sayin.
That’s a British thing. There was a long tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas in England (think A Christmas Carol with it’s 4 ghosts, or the M.R. James ghost stories released each Christmas in England.) It seems odd to Americans, but I think the British are a naturally macabre people.
If Pete Seeger can be forgiven for urging the U.S. not to enter the war against the Nazis because the CPUSA ordered him to say that during the Soviet/Nazi non-aggression pact, then changed his mind when the Nazis violated the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and demanded that the U.S. now enter the war and support the USSR because the CPUSA ordered him to say that, maybe it’s time for you to forgive Burl Ives.
There are worse things than testifying before HUAC.
You know, there were were Commie infiltrators in the USA, Moscow revealed that. Altho Joe McCarthy was generall wrong some of those he accused really were Communist sipes and agitators:
*Joseph McCarthy remains a very controversial figure. In the view of a few conservative latter-day authors, such as commentators William Norman Grigg[135] and Medford Stanton Evans,[136][137] McCarthy’s place in history should be reevaluated. Some scholars assert that new evidence—in the form of Venona-decrypted Soviet messages, Soviet espionage data now opened to the West, and newly released transcripts of closed hearings before McCarthy’s subcommittee—has partially vindicated McCarthy by showing that many of his identifications of Communists were correct and that the scale of Soviet espionage activity in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s was larger than many scholars suspected.[138][139][140] After reviewing evidence from Venona and other sources, historian John Earl Haynes concluded that, of 159 people identified on lists used or referenced by McCarthy, evidence was substantial that nine had aided Soviet espionage efforts. He suggested that a majority of those on the lists could legitimately have been considered security risks, but that a substantial minority could not.[141] Many other scholars, including some generally regarded as conservative, have opposed these views.[142][143]
Among those implicated in files later made public from the Venona project and Soviet sources were Cedric Belfrage, Frank Coe, Lauchlin Currie, Harold Glasser, David Karr, Mary Jane Keeney, and Leonard Mins.[141][144][145][146][147][148][149]*
Musically it’s a beautiful song, yes. I just heard the James Taylor-Natalie Cole cover and they do a great job of the harmonies. But the problem for me and for many many others is the lyrics. They have an unpleasant feel, and they’re especially creepy for anyone who’s been in a coercive or manipulative relationship or situation. I don’t remember whether it was Natalie Cole or another female artist (of the many that I heard during my 8 hour road trip last week) who delivered the line “What’s in this drink?” in a way that made my husband say “Uh-oh!” while my teen yelled out “roofies!”
Here’s an article that discusses whether the song is romantic or “rapey”:
We have explained that to length over here:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=814225
The song is in no way “rapey”.
First off, thank you, thank you, everyone, for echoing my sentiments on the truly abysmal quality of music on constant display every holiday season, and especially to anyone who said “all of them”. Yes. Me that, so much. (I know that came across as awkward, but I’m too happy to care. 
) I 'd like to go into a blow-by-blow of why every song has become so unlistenable, but 1. I don’t have anywhere near the energy for that, and 2. because I make it a point to avoid malls and mainstream radio stations as much as humanly possible during the holidays, I don’t actually know what’s getting run into the ground now. But again, thanks; this was the best Christmas present I could’ve gotten. Well, that’s not strictly true…I can’t actually say the best Christmas present I could’ve gotten in mixed company…but from my fellows on a message board, yes, simply the best.
I think it speaks volumes that my alt-rock stations played a grand total of THREE Christmas songs, once (and these stations regularly play dreck like According To Him and The Story of a Girl, so their standards aren’t too high). That’s because Christmas music is about the relentless, militant celebration of vanilla mainstream values…or, more accurately, the relentless, militant celebration of what vanilla mainstream values were in the 40’s. Alternative Christmas music doesn’t exist for the same reason disco or hair metal or hippie Christmas music doesn’t exist, and for that reason it has absolutely nothing for me.
If I had to point to one song that particularly bothered me this time, it would definitely be The First Noel. EVERY-FRAKKING-WHERE played that one, invariably with that horribly divaized overextended ululating crap (“No-oh-eehhh-ellllll No-oh-ohhohohhoEHHHEIEIEIIEIEIIEAAAHAEILLLLLLL!”). I have the sinking feeling that that’s the real reason it became so popular.
I actually find Feliz Navidad the least objectionable. Yeah, it’s a nothing song, but I’ve heard enough nothing songs that they don’t bother me. (“Too long ago, too long apart, she couldn’t wait another day for…the Captain of The Heart.”) According to xkcd, it’s the only Christmas song from the 70’s, which, if not a plus, at least distinguishes it a bit.
Baby It’s Cold Outside has become one of those Internet things where the raging arguments both ways annoy me far, far more than the thing itself. Basically the Titanic of music.
emphasis added
Give it a break. It dates before 1823. Maybe a lot before.
And here’s disco.
I know Christmas is over, but I do have a gripe. I don’t mind the classics (not that I’ve heard them often in my life), but FOR THE LOVE OF GOD don’t remake the classics. I recall last year that someone remade Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmastime, and I thought that was the lowest point of music.
For what it’s worth: my grandmother (died 1956) – a highly musical and musically accomplished lady – loathed “The First Noel”, for what she considered its extreme musical tackiness.
The New Oxford Book of Carols states that the version we have is not the original tune/arrangement, and that the refrain was most likely just a descant of the original.