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When Music Teeters on the Edge of Romantic and Creepy
Due to a loss in the family and having a lot on my reading list, I unfortunately will not be able to do a Christmasy comic book article this year. Sorry guys, I did have one book in mind but I just wasn’t jiving with it. I’ll come up with something for you though, so don’t worry.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get into how “Baby It’s Cold Outside” is about date rape!
Okay, that last sentence was mostly just to get people’s attention (lol), but the idea that this holiday song from the 40s is about rape has been floating around the internet for almost a decade now. “Baby It’s Cold Outside” is a call and response duet where a woman muses about how she needs to get home while a man tries to convince her to stay for the night. According to Wikipedia, the song was written by lyricist Frank Loesser, who’s worked on the musical Guys and Dolls, for him and his wife to sing at their housewarming party to signal that it was time for people to go home. It became an instant hit, gets featured in Neptune’s Daughter, several big stars do covers of it, and the rest is history.
Very simple, kinda corny, and super creepy?
Baby it’s cold outside (youtube.com)
The main contention that modern listeners have with this song is the man’s efforts to convince the woman…
