There's been a lot of controversy surrounding the song

The controversy surrounding 'Baby, It's Cold Outside' began when a radio station in the US said that it was removing the song from its playlists over concerns that the song was tacitly about sexual assault.

The lyrics, which includes a key line that purportedly alludes to a drink being spiked, were deemed too controversial and the song was subsequently pulled. When asked about the song by The Journal, Christmas FM co-founder Garvan Rigby told them that the song's lyrics "are of a different era."

The song was originally written for the 1944 film 'Neptune's Daughter', and would go on to win Best Original Song at the Oscars that year. Naturally enough, the news of Christmas FM banning the song on the basis of its lyrics was met with widespread criticism, not the least of which is because the song isn't actually about spiking drinks.

In the '40s, "What's in this drink?" was a joke about women knowing exactly what they were doing and doing it anyway. The joke, in other words, was that they were totally sober and simply using drink as an excuse to do what they wanted. Moreover, the song itself was about the idea of an unchaperoned woman fretting - and then ignoring - the implications of being in a man's house during the night, and claiming that it's "cold outside" as a reason to stay.

Anyway, Christmas FM has since stated via Twitter that the song wasn't banned at all, but merely that the song itself didn't resonate with listeners and was dropped last year as a result.

Here's the tweet in question.

Whether the song is controversial or not or should be played can continue to be debated, but there's one thing we can all agree on - and that's that the version with Tom Jones and Cerys Matthews from Catatonia is a banger.

Bloody freezin', innit?

 

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