Just a quick post to wish you all a Merry Christmas spent with friends and family, and a happy New Year filled with many new and wonderful experiences to come!
Recently one of the nurses on Labor and Delivery commented that a lot of Christmas songs, though cheerful and merry and bright in tune, are lyrically dubious.
For instance:
- Walking in a Winter Wonderland: Shotgun weddings and shacking up ("In the meadow we can build a snowman,/then pretend that he is Parson Brown./He'll say 'Are you married?'/We'll say 'No man,but you can do the job while you're in town!')
- Santa Baby: materialism and sugar daddies
- Let It Snow: using the weather as an excuse to make moves on your significant other (this is why so many babies are born in July, August, and September, by the way)
- And the queen of all questionable songs: Baby It's Cold Outside.
However, I recently heard a version with Dean Martin, and God bless him, but I finally realized how creepy this song can be. Especially with this legion of schoolgirls accompanying him. He sounds like a player and a pedophile, rolled into one blithely oblivious song.
I mean, look at the cover album. Try not to shudder.
I think the ew factor mainly depends on the lead voice in the song.
Lovely, strong, female voice? Even if the male sounds much older or inappropriate, the creepiness is decreased.
Male? As The Atlantic says, "it sounds like the song is describing a run-up to a sexual assault."
Unless they're both male, I guess.
Both the Atlantic article and the Salon article rightly point out that, though most male vocalist's lines are quite smarmy ("What's the sense of hurting my pride"), and the man is essentially pressuring a woman who is trying to say 'no', one of the most offensive part of the song is the line, "What's in this drink?" It may be entirely innocent (like, "Wow, this drink is strong"), but it's hard not to think roofie. The most hilarious suggestion of the Atlantic article:
Ashley: So we'd get rid of "what's in this drink."Um, I love cookies and champagne cocktails, and I would totally buy that song.
Eleanor: It's really the worst line ever. I think something more like, "Oooh, this drink is tasty," or, "Champagne cocktails are my favorite." Or even moving away from alcohol altogether: "one more song," "one more cookie," etc.
The Atlantic article also suggests some other interesting fixes for the song: making the context of a loving relationship clear, and making it clearer that the answer really isn't a clear no, through "a little more evidence that she really is saying, "talk me into staying" rather than "no, really, I want to leave immediately."
Or, in this day and age of post-feminism, you could just reverse the gender roles and put the girl on the prowl.
(Zooey Deschanel has literally recorded this song three times, in three different ways.)
Because of Elf, the light, swinging melody, and the rarity of a Christmas-time duet, "Baby It's Cold Outside" will continue to be one of the songs that I love to force people to sing with me in the winter.
But next time, I think I'll try to slip in a line about, "half a cookie more."
Merry Christmas, God bless, and to all a good night!
Posts
Leave reply