‘Tis the season… the season for giving, the season for sharing, the season for gifts and love and hypocrisy.
I started thinking this last week when the story broke that several radio stations were banning the holiday classic "Baby its Cold Outside" because some had raised objections that its lyrics were "tone-deaf" in light of the #metoo movement.
In the song, a woman says she can’t stay but her boyfriend repeatedly urges her not to go. She later says, “Say, what's in this drink?”
Had he slipped her a date rape drug? Seriously? In 1944? I don’t think so.
Nevertheless, stations pulled the song.
What songs didn’t they pull?
Songs that talk about shooting cops, and “hoes” and slipping "molly" (ecstasy) in a woman’s drink. By most people’s standards, that is much more degrading if we’re going to judge a song by its lyrics.
In the end, maybe a song is just that, a song. Something to be enjoyed or not.
Lyrics and a melody.
And if we don’t like it, we can ... wait for it ... turn it off.