Four years ago the Me Too movement boosted this old holiday chestnut to No. 1 on the Most Offensive Christmas Songs list. Personally I don’t see how anything could be more offensive than “Santa Baby,” but a lot of people, put off by the song’s creepy Bill Cosby vibe, pressured radio stations to drop it from their playlists. Many did.
It’s not as if the predatory theme was some sort of subtext — in the score, the duet partners are labeled “Wolf” and “Mouse.” Broadway composer Frank Loesser wrote the tune to perform with his wife, actress Lynn Garland, as the closing number at a housewarming party they threw in New York in 1944, and for several years it was their calling card.
“We became instant parlor room stars,” Garland later wrote. “We got invited to all the best parties for years on the basis of ‘Baby.’ It was our ticket to caviar and truffles. Parties were built around our being the closing act.” That all came to an end in 1949, when Loesser, tasked by MGM with scoring the romantic comedy “Neptune’s Daughter,” included the tune. He was rewarded with an Oscar for Best Original Song, but Garland never forgave him. “I felt as betrayed as if I’d caught him in bed with another woman,” she said years after the couple divorced in 1957.
Here’s how Hollywood rendered it with Esther Williams as the Mouse and Ricardo Montalban as the Wolf.
After it appeared in the film, Loesser and Garland recorded it themselves, one of nearly a dozen versions released in 1949 alone.
As of 2020 there were more than 400 recordings of the song, which I’ve heard on the radio more than once this year. Perhaps the most controversial cover was released in 2019 by John Legend as a bonus track on the deluxe edition of “A Legendary Christmas.” His duet with Kelly Clarkson features revised lyrics that emphasize consent, a change that seems to have offended almost as many people as the original version.
