Baby, It's Cold Outside

Quote: Evenbob

Dean Martin’s classic Christmas song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” has reached the top 10 digital sales chart for the first time ever, despite recent controversy over whether the lyrics promote sexual harassment. According to Billboard, sales of Martin’s versions of song were up 70 percent to 11,000 downloads in the week ending December 13th, while versions by Michael Bublé and Idina Menzel, as well as Brett Eldredge and Meghan Trainor, have both reached the holiday 100 with a sharp increase in sales.

Quote: AZDuffman

Heard it at most of the parties I have worked this year. It has been rediscovered.

Quote:

The music and lyrics of the song were improvised on stage during a concert in Southern Ontario, Canada[9] (the guitarist, Randy Bachman, recalled it being in Kitchener;[10] Burton Cummings, the lead singer, said it was at the Broom and Stone, a curling rink in Scarborough that was used for concerts).[11] Bachman was playing notes while tuning his guitar after replacing a broken string, and he realized he was playing a new riff that he wanted to remember. He continued playing it and the other band members returned to the stage and joined in, creating a jam session in which Cummings improvised the lyrics.[10] They noticed a kid with a cassette recorder making a bootleg recording and asked him for the tape.[12] They listened to the tape and noted down the words that Cummings had extemporized, and which he later revised.[11]

The song's lyrics have been the matter of debate, often interpreted as an attack on U.S. politics (especially the draft). Cummings, who composed the lyrics, said in 2013 that they had nothing to do with politics. "What was on my mind was that girls in the States seemed to get older quicker than our girls and that made them, well, dangerous. When I said 'American woman, stay away from me,' I really meant 'Canadian woman, I prefer you.' It was all a happy accident."[11]

Jim Kale, the group's bassist, explained his take on the lyrics:

The popular misconception was that it was a chauvinistic tune, which was anything but the case. The fact was, we came from a very strait-laced, conservative, laid-back country, and all of a sudden, there we were in Chicago, Detroit, New York – all these horrendously large places with their big city problems. After that one particularly grinding tour, it was just a real treat to go home and see the girls we had grown up with. Also, the war was going on, and that was terribly unpopular. We didn't have a draft system in Canada, and we were grateful for that. A lot of people called it anti-American, but it wasn't really. We weren't anti-anything. John Lennon once said that the meanings of all songs come after they are recorded. Someone else has to interpret them.[9]