Time to rethink holiday lyrics
Re Hark, the horrid tunesmiths, Menon, Dec. 4 Welcome to the Christmas season — sorry, holiday season. Having grown up in the past 60 or so years, I have been continuously upgraded and educated by the changing mores of western society. For 30 of those years, I have been more enlightened from the perspectives of my two beautiful and intelligent daughters.
Quite a few years ago, with the approach of the holiday season and the bombardment of holiday songs, my youngest brought my attention to the inappropriate lyrics of the old favourite, “Baby It’s Cold Outside.”
Rather than just relegating her comment to the recesses of my mind while driving, I consciously started listening to it more intensely — and came to the realization that the lyrics were, in fact, those of a date rape song.
With that earwig now cemented firmly in my brain, I absolutely must turn that song off when it presents itself on the radio. It has become such a noticeable action during December that my occasional passengers have noted my behaviour and giggled.
Some have commented on the fact that when it was written (for a 1949 romantic comedy, Neptune’s Daughter, starring Red Skelton, Esther Williams and Ricardo Montalban), it was a trite piece of fluff that has been covered and popularized by every noteworthy singer since.
I read Vinay Menon’s column with interest, discussing the growing movement toward the review of lyrics of holiday songs. Now, in the perspective of the 21st Century, there may be more songs that need to be considered inappropriate. However, as you read to the end, Menon’s article does have a distinct tongue-in-cheek giggle aspect to match its editorial sincerity. Doug Wighton, Mississauga