I’ve got to go away (but baby, it’s cold outside)
This evening has been (been hoping that you’d drop in)
So very nice (I’ll hold your hands, they’re just like ice)
My mother will start to worry (beautiful what’s your hurry?)
My father will be pacing the floor (listen to the fireplace roar)
So really I’d better scurry (beautiful please don’t hurry)
But maybe just a half a drink more (put some records on while I pour)
The neighbors might think (baby, it’s bad out there)
Say what’s in this drink? (no cabs to be had out there)
I wish I knew how (your eyes are like starlight now)
To break this spell (I’ll take your hat, your hair looks swell)
I ought to say, no, no, no sir (mind if I move in closer?)
At least I’m gonna say that I tried (what’s the sense in hurtin’ my pride?)
I really can’t stay (oh baby don’t hold out)
But baby, it’s cold outside
I simply must go (but baby, it’s cold outside)
The answer is no (but baby, it’s cold outside)
Your welcome has been(how lucky that you dropped in)
So nice and warm (look out the window at this dawn)
My sister will be suspicious (gosh your lips look delicious)
My brother will be there at the door (waves upon the tropical shore)
My maiden aunts mind is vicious (gosh your lips are delicious)
But maybe just a cigarette more (never such a blizzard before)
I’ve gotta get home (but baby, you’d freeze out there)
Say lend me a coat (it’s up to your knees out there)
You’ve really been grand (I thrill when you touch my hand)
But don’t you see? (how can you do this thing to me?)
There’s bound to be talk tomorrow (think of my lifelong sorrow)
At least there will be plenty implied (if you got pneumonia and died)
I really can’t stay (get over that old out)
Baby, it’s cold
Baby, it’s cold outside
Songwriter: Frank Loesser
Baby, It’s Cold Outside lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
The controversy over “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” – a song four years older than my ancient ass – just rolls on, as Millennials and Generation Z (or whatever they’re called) continue their smug condemnation of anyone who wasn’t “woke” long before that word came to represent a lack of social awareness.
Here’s what a writer in USA Today said last year about “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”:
“Is this the year we finally retire ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside?’ In 2017, America woke up to the systemic sexual predation that pervades every corner of society, but some of our Christmas carols are stuck in the past. In particular, the drumbeat against ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ is getting too loud to ignore.”
Ah, the drumbeat. Before you know it, Frank Loesser won’t be asked to host the Oscars.
Who is Frank Loesser, you ask? Who was Frank Loesser is the more pertinent question. He was one of the great songwriters of the Broadway stage – don’t take my word for it, ask Stephen Sondheim. Guys and Dolls is still considered by many to be the perfect American musical. Among Loesser’s greater accomplishments are the witty and satirical (and tunefully presented) lyrics of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which skewered the hypocritical and often sexist “big business” workplace environment of the l950s and early 1960s. The love song “I Believe in You” was sung by the anti-hero to himself in the mirror (Merry Christmas, Robert Morse!).
Frank Loesser was cynical and defiantly New York, even when he was Hollywood’s “go to” songwriter. He is an American treasure – or he would be (some seem to insist) if only he’d held the attitudes of progressives of 2018 seventy-four years ago.
I’m not going to go into great detail to defend “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” which is a sexy, clever and catchy song designed for adults – Loesser wrote it for himself and his wife to sing together at parties and it only went public when a Hollywood producer, who heard it sung at one such gathering, wanted to use it in a film (it won the Academy Award for Best Song).
songwriter Frank Loesser and his wife Lynn Garland sing “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” at a party.
But let’s start with this: “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is not “a Christmas carol.” It’s not even a Christmas song. Of course a lot of songs from the Great American Songbook – enduring American popular songs and jazz standards from the early 20th century – that get played as Christmas songs are just winter-theme tunes: “Winter Wonderland,” “Let It Snow,” “Sleigh Ride.” None are “carols.”
As for “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” being “rapey,” let’s examine the most notorious lyric, “Say, what’s in this drink?” That refers to, is this punch or is there alcohol in this thing? How much booze did you put in this, buster? Still, the guy may be a letch, and may even want to get laid, but the woman is presumably twenty-one, knows she’s alone in the company of a man and is in charge of her own destiny. A man wanting to have sex with a woman isn’t a crime, and if it were, the species is who would be screwed. I am fairly sure that, at some point this evening, a male will buy a female a drink or glass of wine in a bar or restaurant, in hopes it will relax her and perhaps improve his chances.
Ah, but chances for what?
Well, let’s back up. The answer to, “Say what’s in this drink?” is not “a roofie.” Please. Bill Cosby was seven years old when the song came out.
Hard as it may be to believe by people born in the late 20th century or (shudder) this century, a male could want a female to stick around so they could have some harmless fun, like kissing and maybe (shocking!) petting. Sexual intercourse was not necessarily on the menu. Forced or coerced sex certainly wasn’t. People in 1949 watching the film in which the song first appeared were not thinking, “That Ricardo Montalban is trying to rape Esther Williams!” Most didn’t think Ricardo was after sex – just feminine affection.
The serious issue here is the dangerous trend of judging yesterday by today – specifically, the attitudes of yesterday that many (including me) agree were misjudged. But there’s a corollary to “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it”: those who don’t attempt to understand the context of yesterday are going to be denied the pleasures of the past…and a better understanding of it.
The current couple of generations have no monopoly on thinking prior generations were a bunch of louts. Trust me – we Baby Boomers are no prize. Once the Beatles arrived, we dismissed our parents’ culture with smug know-it-all-ness.
Important pop culture figures like Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope and John Wayne were ridiculed and even despised. Of course, it must be said that all three of those aided and abetted in their own ridicule as they grew older. Sinatra covered the Beatles embarrassingly (“Something in the way she moves, Jack!”), Bob Hope became a hopeless self-parody, and John Wayne made political comments that make your drunk uncle at Thanksgiving seem like a pundit.
My generation talked peace and love, sang of Aquarius and went to Woodstock. Then we aged into old people who have made war and racism popular again. When somebody (and this happens a lot) tells me Mickey Spillane was a misogynist, I say, “You’ve confused misogyny with misanthropy.” (And clearly they have never really read the books.)
We have a lot of problems in this country and in this world. I am on the liberal side of the center line, but it troubles me – and even frightens me – that seemingly so many young progressives have such a rigid, idealistic, self-righteous view of things. Kids in cages, government corruption, climate change, child abuse, real sexual predators…so many problems that make the Christmas season at once a solace we seek and a terrible ironic thing that has ceased to mean anything. Real problems, not priggish superiority over the “rapey” lyrics to a seventy-four-year-old song.
Bing Crosby sang with David Bowie about “Peace on earth.” If those two had respect for each other, and could overlook what must have seemed like flawed behavior in each other, can’t we sit by the fire and drink some egg nog?
Hey! How much rum did you put in this, Barb?
M.A.C.
