Baby It's Cold Outside

We had this arctic front come through the other day. It was cold. Outside. After I extracted Aine from campus, the perennial holiday favorite, Baby It's Cold Outside, came on the radio. We spent the next fifteen minutes arguing about who was singing that particular version.

I should note: the oldies station, during the month of December, plays only Christmas songs 24/7. At first, this information alarmed me. I thought, there are only so many Christmas songs out there, are they going to play the same ones over and over and over? Then I remembered, that this same station, for the other 11 months of the year, has four decades of music from which to select their repertoire, and every time I get in the car, I hear the same three or four songs. So, since December 1st, I have actually heard a greater variety of music.

Thinking about the aforementioned song, I wondered who sang the best version. Rather, I didn't care so much about the best version, but which version I liked the best. So I listened to 25 versions and rated them on a 9 point scale. The parameters included male performance, female performance, mood, and tempo. I found myself surprised by the results. Before we get to the results, though, a little history.

Frank Loesser wrote Baby, It's Cold Outside in 1944 as a conversational duet between two individuals he marked as the mouse and the wolf. He's the same guy that wrote the musicals Guys and Dolls and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. He first performed the song with his wife, Lynn Garland, at a party hosted at their home, as a tactful way of inviting his guest to start gathering their coats and scarves. They performed the song at parties for years and Lynn always thought of it as "their song." When Loesser sold MGM the rights in 1948, Lynn was not very pleased.

The song gained its first national audience in the 1949 movie Neptune's Daughter, earning Loesser an Academy Award.

That year saw 8 different recordings of the song, two of them, the Dinah Shore/Buddy Clark version and the Margaret Whiting/John Mercer version, reached number 4 on the Billboard charts. The Whiting/Mercer, I gather from internetal evidence, is the popular standard.

The song teaches us two very important things: 1) the female brain is impaired by the cold and 2) if you just keep insisting, eventually she'll change her mind. Baby, It's Cold Outside has received its share of controversy and, indeed, it can be creepy at times. Take the line: "say, what's in this drink?" See also: rohypnol. The more times you hear this song in a row, the less romantic and the more insidious it sounds. After listening to it over 100 times across two days, all I can say for certain is that I never want to hear it again.

In explaining my results, I want to stress that they are completely subjective and not open for discussion or dissent.

The Wolf and Mouse parts can change from version to version. In some versions, they are both performed by men. In some, the man sings Mouse and the woman sings Wolf. I'm fine with both of those, but Wolf needs to sound dominant, but not manipulative. Mouse needs to sound savvy and complicit. I prefer Wolf to have a middle range sort of voice, like a cello. Too high and it doesn't sound dominant, too low and it's just off-putting. Mouse needs a smoky, sultry sort of voice, to let you know that Mouse knows what's going on, but he or she is putting a token resistance as a matter of form. Too high and Mouse sounds naive and in a bad situation. Too low and Mouse sounds like a dude. I also found the pacing important. I don't like the faster, frenetic versions of this song. I want to enjoy it. I will not be rushed. However, if the song is performed too slowly, it crumples like a soggy pumpkin. I prefer that Wolf and Mouse take turns. In some versions they constantly sing over each other and chaos ensues.

The very nearly perfect version of this song, by Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors (actually a husband-wife duet) loses points for being just a touch too fast. Otherwise, this is my go-to version. The Cee Lo Green/Christina Aguilera only suffers because Christina Aguilera's voice gets annoying at certain points. Best Wolf performances include Bob Hope, Cee Lo Green, Drew Holcomb, and Ben Folds. Best Mouse performances go to Nora Jones, Zoey Deschanel, Haley Reinhart, and Ellie Holcomb. Worst performances include Willie Nelson, Cerys Matthews, Tallulah Bankhead, and Lyle Lovett. The Absolute Worst Version was Nick and Jessica. I don't really know how to describe how abhorrent this version is. Don't listen to it.

Here are the results:

Score	Version	Year
8	Cee Lo Green, Christina Aguilera	2012
8	Louis Armstrong, Velma Middleton	1949
8	Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors	2009
8	Ben Folds, Sara Bareilles	2011
7	Zoey Deschanel, Leon Redbone (Elf Soundtrack)	2003
7	Zach Braff, Donald Faison (Scrubs Version)	2011
7	Bob Hope, Doris Day	1949
6	Chris Colfer, Darren Criss (Glee Version)	2010
6	Lady Antebellum	2008
6	Haley Reinhart, Casey Abrams (American Idol Season 10)	2011
6	Louis Jordan, Ella Fitzgerald	1949
6	Eugene Ruffolo, Margaret Fiellin	2009
6	Zoey Deschanel, Matthew Ward (She & Him)	2011
6	Don Cornell, Laura Leslie	1949
6	Dean Martin, Chorus	1959
5	Nora Jones, Willie Nelson	2010
5	Michael Buble, Anne Murray	2009
5	Tom Jones, Cerys Matthews	1999
5	Rod Stewart, Dolly Parton	2004
5	Ray Charles, Betty Carter	1961
5	Dinah Shore, Buddy Clark	1949
5	Lyle Lovett, Kat Edmonson	2012
4	Margaret Whiting, John Mercer	1949
4	Tallulah Bankhead, Jack Carson	1950
3	Jessica Simpson, Nick Lachey	2004