John Legend joined Kelly Clarkson on The Kelly Clarkson Show to perform the duo’s new version of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” The track, which comes off Legend’s new holiday album A Legendary Christmas, has been updated for the modern era, with fresh lyrics like “It’s your body and your choice.”
In the performance, Legend and Clarkson are joined by a band and a horn section as they duet on the soulful tune. The song gets a big band feel at the end as the instrumentals and vocals build to a climax. “I simply should go (text me when you get home),” the pair croons. “Oh, I’m supposed to say no (mm, I guess that’s respectable)/ This welcome has been (I feel lucky that you dropped in)/ So nice and warm (but you better go before it storms).”
Legend recently responded to the controversy over the new lyrics during an appearance on The Tonight Show. “We knew there was some controversy around the original lyrics, and looked at with 2019 eyes, we thought it would be fun to do a new version, make it fun, update the lyrics to be more current,” Legend told host Jimmy Fallon. “So we talked about ride-sharing services, and we make a joke like, ‘Why do you still live at home with your mom?’” He added that people “were just so upset that we would mess with that sacrosanct version of the original song” because it’s “political correctness gone too far.”
