Change one line in song

Holiday classic can be adapted for playlists

All together now on three... let’s sing the lyrics to “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” Chances are, except for the chorus, you don’t know the words. The 1949 holiday classic, first featured in the forgettable film “Neptune’s Daughter,” has been banned in Canada by several radio broadcasters, including CBC and Bell Media.

A call-and-response song, by today’s standards with the #MeToo movement, it’s a bit creepy. The woman wants to get going, but the man tries to talk her into staying using bad weather as an excuse.

The offending line is, “What’s in this drink?” Nevermind that the date-rape drug wasn’t around in 1949. Maybe she’s inquiring about decaf versus regular coffee.

The song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song (an accolade shared by “Over the Rainbow,” “White Christmas” and “My Heart Will Go On”) and because it was written for a movie, the song is used as a plot device.

In the film, it’s sung as a duet with Esther Williams and Ricardo Montalban (that would have sucked) and literally hundreds of artists have since covered the tune, most notably Dinah Shore and Michael Buble.

To be honest, I never noticed the lyrics until the controversy broke this week.

“Silent Night” or “Jingle Bells,” I can quote in my sleep. My recollection of holiday lyrics gets a little fuzzy when it comes to “Baby It’s Cold Outside.”

This once again opens up the debate about material penned decades ago and whether we should keep it as a time capsule or throw it away because it doesn’t fit with today’s standards.

Case in point, the last track on The Beatles’ “Rubber Soul,” is the utterly repulsive “Run For Your Life,” which John Lennon apparently borrowed from Elvis Presley’s “Baby Let’s Play House.”

It’s still included on current re-releases of “Rubber Soul,” even though most radio stations have banned it.

Forgotten in this debate is that CBC and Rogers Media are within their rights to add or delete any song from their playlist and for whatever reason. Here’s the compromise. Radio editing equipment is now extremely sophisticated, yet easy to use. Programmers are able to delete curse words from hiphop songs and nobody knows they’re missing.

Take out the one offending line and put the song back on the playlist. —James Miller

Valley editor