John Legend & Kelly Clarkson’s “Baby It's Cold Outside” New Lyrics, Explained
The Voice Coach said he wanted to write a version of "Baby It's Cold Outside" with "more current" lyrics.
John Legend and Kelly Clarkson are both holiday music masters in their own right. Together, The Voice Coaches put a new, modern spin on Frank Loesser’s 1944 Christmas song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” that’s been listened to millions of times since it was released.
Featured on Legend’s Christmas album, Legendary Christmas, the duo performed the updated song as a duet on The Kelly Clarkson Show and The Voice in December 2019. Around this time, the modernized version of “Baby It’s Cold Outside” faced a flurry of reactions. But the controversy surrounding “Baby It’s Cold Outside” certainly didn’t start with their version; folks have been debating the lyrics for years.
For Legend, he sought to rewrite a classic holiday song through the ears of a listener today. Read on to see how the “All of Me” singer tweaked the song and how he responded to the reactions to his version.
John Legend sang an updated “Baby It’s Cold Outside” with Kelly Clarkson
Legend worked with comedian, actress, and former SNL writer Natasha Rothwell to update the lyrics in “Baby It’s Cold Outside” to make them more current with the times and less suggestive.
In the beginning of the updated song, for example, Clarkson sings “I’ve got to go away” and Legend responds, “I can call you a ride.” Originally, the male voice sang, “But baby, it's cold outside.”
Later in the song, as Clarkson sings, “My mom will start to worry,” Legends replies with, “'I’ll call the car and tell him to hurry.” In the original, the male voice doesn’t offer a ride home and sings, “Beautiful, what’s your hurry?”
Additionally, when the woman sings about perhaps having another drink, Legend’s version responds with “It's your body and your choice” while the original sings “Put some records on while I pour.”
Some of the more problematic lyrics in the original song — ”Say what's in this drink?” and “Baby don't hold out” and “The answer is no” — are completely omitted from the updated version.
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John Legend says his “Baby It’s Cold Outside” lyrics aren’t supposed to be “preachy”
When Legend first released his updated version of “Baby It’s Cold Outside” in 2019, the world was in the midst of the #MeToo movement, with survivors speaking out against and raising awareness about sexual violence. And though some radio stations had banned Loesser’s version in 2018 due to the original lyrics, Legend’s updated version caused reactions, as well. In an interview with The Guardian, Legend said he found the reaction “interesting.”
“The song was supposed to be silly!” he told the publication. “It wasn’t supposed to be preachy at all. I never disparaged the old version.”
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During an appearance on The Tonight Show, Legend told Jimmy Fallon he “looked at [the song] with 2019 eyes” as he was rewriting it with Rothwell. “We thought it’d be fun to just do a new version. Make it fun, update the lyrics to be more current. So we talked about ride-sharing services and we make a joke about why do you still live at home with your mom,” he said. “Some people were just so upset that we would mess with this sacrosanct version of the original song.”
Speaking to NBC News a year before Legend released his version, Loesser’s daughter, Susan, defended her father’s original song and said the song should be looked at “in the context of the time.”
“It was 1944,” she said. “My father wrote it because when he and my mom had parties where everybody had to have an act to entertain the guests.”
Ultimately, Legend told People “there’s no side to be on” and “it’s just another version of the song.”
As for Clarkson, she said on her talk show in 2019, "We like the original, but we noticed a lot of people didn't, and so we were like 'Let's give them another option' or whatever," before adding cheekily, "And apparently, we killed Christmas."
For the record, Christmas is not killed, and you can listen to Clarkson and Legend's updated "Baby, It's Cold Outside" in the video above.
