Over the last few years, there has been a lot of comment and criticism on a very particular Christmas song: Baby It’s Cold Outside. Written in the 1940s, the song is about a woman and a man talking/singing about whether or not she should be heading home for the night. Neither of them want the night to end, and the song makes it seem like the man is trying to pressure the woman into staying.
This argument has only become apparent in recent years. Many people are upset over certain lyrics, such as:
“Beautiful, what’s your hurry?”
“Say, what’s in this drink?”
“What’s the sense of hurting’ my pride?”
Well, people can officially stop worrying about the negative connotation of the original lyrics. This year, a new (and improved) version of the Christmas classic came out!
For the most part, the lyrics the woman sings are not changed too much. Some of the words are changed so that they fit the 2020s instead of the 1940s. The biggest change that the majority of people will be pleased to hear in the song is the change for this section:
“Say what’s in this drink? I wish I knew how to break this spell.”
to…
“What will my friends think / If I have one more drink. You really know how to cast a spell.”
Is it better? Slightly. It still focuses on the fear of being judged by others based on speculation, but at least it doesn’t paint her as someone who is being held there against her will.
Now, when it comes to the lyrics for the man, they practically had to do a huge revamp of the original lyrics. Like, I can’t find any lyrics that they actually kept from the original in the new version.
The words have become much more progressive, with the man explaining that while he wants her to stay, it is ultimately her choice and he respects whatever it may be. That is literally a complete 180° from the original lyrics, which were considered to be very insistent that the woman in the song was worrying over nothing.
That being said, whoever rewrote the lyrics definitely had some fun with it. The man mentions in the song that he has called an Uber driver named “Murray” for her, and it later becomes a small joke again when the Uber driver calls out “Ma’am, I really can’t stay.” In the performance, the singers carry on with their singing, completely ignoring Murray the Uber driver.
Will the public speculation finally end over Baby It’s Cold Outside? It just might! And while the new version is much more 2019/2020, many may still opt to listen to the original version of the song for old time’s sake.