John Legend’s new take on a holiday hit has left Dean Martin’s daughter cold.
Deana Martin, daughter to the famous crooner, slammed Legend’s rewrite of the classic tune “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” in an interview with “Good Morning Britain” published Monday.
“He’s stealing the thunder from (original composer) Frank Loesser’s song and from my dad,” said Martin, whose father recorded a famous version of the 1944 song. “He should write his own song if he doesn’t like this one, but don’t change the lyrics. It’s a classic, perfect song.”
The debate over “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” took center stage last holiday season after a radio station in Cleveland announced it would no longer play the song and several other stations around the country followed suit. Critics argue the lyrics have not aged well in the aftermath of #MeToo, with the woman telling the man “no, no, no” and asking, “What’s in this drink?”
In Legend’s 2019 version, he and Kelly Clarkson sing different lyrics. One new verse goes as follows, according to Vanity Fair:
Clarkson: “What will my friends think …”
Legend: “I think they should rejoice”
Clarkson: “… if I have one more drink?”
Legend: “It’s your body, and your choice.”
John Legend, Kelly Clarkson to release updated version of ‘Baby, it’s Cold Outside’
Though Martin, 71, praised Legend as “fantastic,” “wonderful” and “a great writer,” she finds his rewrite “absolutely absurd.”
“You do not change the lyrics to this song,” she said. “He’s made it more sexual with those words that he has just said.”
Though Martin said her dad “didn’t care about things like that,” she predicted he wouldn’t appreciate Legend’s new take either.
“He’d say it’s absurd,” she continued. “I think that John should have just left it alone.”
Loesser’s daughter also spoke out against the critics last year, arguing her father had no ill intentions when writing it.
“Bill Cosby ruined it for everybody,” Susan Loesser, 74, told NBC News in December 2018. “Way before #MeToo, I would hear from time to time people call it a date rape song. I would get annoyed because it’s a song my father wrote for him and my mother to sing at parties. But ever since Cosby was accused of drugging women, I hear the date rape thing all the time.”
Here are the lyrics to ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside,’ the Christmas song facing a radio ban
Loesser said her father would have been “furious” at the radio stations’ decision.
“I think it would be good if people looked at the song in the context of the time,” she said. “People used to say, ‘What’s in this drink’ as a joke. You know, ‘This drink is going straight to my head, so what’s in this drink?’ Back then it didn’t mean, ‘You drugged me.’ “
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Contributing: Hannah Yasharoff
