Although several radio stations across the country have pulled the Christmas song from the airwaves this year, one radio station in Kentucky decided to embrace the controversial tune.
WAKY 103.5FM, a station based out of Elizabethtown, played five different versions of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” for two straight hours on Sunday morning.
“BABY, IT’S COLD OUTSIDE! We like it and we’re not afraid to play it on WAKY for the next couple of hours!” the radio station wrote on their Facebook page on Sunday, shortly after the marathon began at 8 a.m.
“I’m not sure why it’s controversial,” Joe Fredele, director of programming for WAKY, local CBS News outlet WLKY. “We’ve played this song for years, you know, this song is older than WAKY is. It’s almost 70 years old.”
Though a beloved classic for many years, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” has recently drawn criticism for promoting rape culture, raising eyebrows with lines like, “Say, what’s in this drink?” and a back-and-forth where a man tries to convince a woman to stay the night despite her continued protests.
Fredele, who considers himself a supporter of the #MeToo movement, explained that he sees “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” as “a romantic song.”
“All it is … is a dialogue between a man and a woman, and at the end of the song, you hear them harmonize together, so they’re agreeing basically,” he said, according to Fox News.
Despite the protests of some, many believe that the controversy is unwarranted, including actress Joan Collins, who argued on Monday that the backlash around the song is an example of how consent culture has become “out of control.”
“What’s going to happen to seduction is you are not going to be allowed anymore,” Collins, 85, said on Good Morning Britain, according to ITV. “Is someone going to have to ask permission of the parents before they can kiss a girl? It’s absolutely becoming out of control. It seems to have happened in the last two years. It seems to get worse and worse.”
Deana Martin, whose father Dean Martin recorded the song in 1959, also described the uproar as “just insane,” while actor William Shatner has encouraged listeners to demand radio stations play the song.
RELATED VIDEO: Merry and Bright! See How Celebrities Are Decking Their Halls for the Holidays
While the song’s composer, Frank Loesser, died in 1969, his 74-year-old daughter Susan believes her father would be “furious” that some stations banned the song.
“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,” she told NBC News earlier this month.
Although she “absolutely” gets why people would find that line concerning now, she added, “I think it would be good if people looked at the song in the context of the time,” explaining that it was written in 1944, not 2018.
“Bill Cosby ruined it for everybody,” she remarked. “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.”
However, despite the controversy, several versions of the song surged in sales and streaming and continued to draw airplay on the radio in the latest tracking week, according to Nielsen Music.
According to Billboard, three interpretations of “Baby It’s Cold Outside” appear on their Holiday Digital Song Sales chart dated Dec. 15, which is the most of any title.
Source: Read Full Article