The classic holiday tune “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” has been given an update. According to CNN, a couple in Minneapolis rewrote the lyrics in the song to emphasize consent–a lesson that has sadly been top news for far too long now (it’s really not that difficult to grasp, is it?).
The new version (which you can listen to in its entirety here), was written by Lydia Liza and Josiah Lemanski to create a “less sexually aggressive version,” and changes lyrics like “I ought to say no no no / You mind if I move in closer” to the clever “I ought to say no no no / You reserve the right to say no” and even changed the title to “It’s Cold Outside.”
The couple told CNN that they’ve “always had a big problem with the song. It’s so aggressive and inappropriate,” and that they’ve decided to rewrite it to bring it into the 21st century. “We started thinking of the open-ended questions that song has–you never figure out if she gets to go home. You never figure out if there was something in her drink. It just leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth.”
The new lyrics include a prompt for the woman to call her mom to let her know she’ll be on her way home soon and the song finishes with her heading home and thanking the guy for a nice night. A sweet end to a date, for sure.
While the original song was written in a much different time (1944, to be exact), this new version brings to light some of the ongoing issues that have dominated the headlines in recent years. When you really think about what the 1944 version of the song entails, it stops being the cute little melody that couples sing to one another and sounds more “rapey.”
Are we going to stop listening to the original? Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean this new version doesn’t raise some valid points.
