The song "Baby It's Cold Outside"

TheVat said:
If society starts censoring such lyrics, it will be chopping off the peaks and troughs of human emotion.
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Yep.

On the one hand, I can see a radio station simply not wanting to play a creepy song (or show a racist TV show.) This happened with the Little Rascals in the 1980's - some of the episodes were just too cringe-y to show any more, and so the networks playing them didn't.

But society (as in our government) should not step in.
 
Pinball1970 said:
There is a really sad song called "Ruby" that is a plea by an injured vet to his wife. Kenny Rogers, a great story teller.
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The saddest song I ever heard was the song "shape of a heart" by Jackson Browne, which chronicled his attempt to keep his girlfriend from killing herself - and his attempt to forgive himself once he failed. (The first three lines were "It was a ruby that she wore, on a chain around her neck, in the shape of a heart" which is what reminded me of it.)

But there's no end of really creepy songs out there*. "Baby it's cold outside" was notable because I strongly suspect it started out with no ill intent - but the passage of time means it's interpreted differently today.

* a few examples -

Kid Rock:
Young ladies, young ladies, I like 'em underage, see
Some say that's statutory - but I say it's mandatory!

New Order:
Please, I beg, don't do this to me
Johnny, don't point that gun at me
Can I save my life at any price?
(spoiler - she can't)

Leonard Cohen:
It is your turn, my beloved
It is your flesh that I wear

Alice Cooper:
While friends and lovers mourn your silly grave
I have other uses for you, darling
 
Thank Heaven for Little Girls

Each time I see a little girl
Of five, or six, or seven
I can't resist the joyous urge
To smile and say
Thank Heaven for little girls
For little girls
Get bigger everyday
Thank Heaven for little girls
They grow up
In the most delightful way
 
billvon said:
Leonard Cohen:
It is your turn, my beloved
It is your flesh that I wear
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Who really knows what Avalanche means? It's all so metaphorical - I figured possibly the hunchbacked narrator was the Earth, suffering under our human civilization. Or maybe Cohen's poetic take on his own period of pain. Anyway, probably not the serial killer in Silence of the Lambs who makes garments out of his kidnapped women. It rubs the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose again!


DaveC426913 said:
Thank Heaven for Little Girls
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Aaand we have a winner!

It probably didn't help that Chevalier was pushing 70 when he sang this in the movie. Even back then, seeing it on tv in the late sixties, it was kind of cringey.
 
TheVat said:
Aaand we have a winner!

It probably didn't help that Chevalier was pushing 70 when he sang this in the movie. Even back then, seeing it on tv in the late sixties, it was kind of cringey.
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My wife has a story about this.

Working late in the hospital one evening, in her isolated, murder-y wing,

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doesn't she hear

♫ Thank Heaven for little girls ♪
For little girls
Get bigger everyday
Thank Heaven for little girls

echoing up and down the dimly lit hallways.


She had to leave her office and creep down the hallway looking in every room, till she found a lone doctor in his office, practicing his singing for a concert. He thought he was alone.
 
TheVat said:
Who really knows what Avalanche means? It's all so metaphorical - I figured possibly the hunchbacked narrator was the Earth, suffering under our human civilization. Or maybe Cohen's poetic take on his own period of pain. Anyway, probably not the serial killer in Silence of the Lambs who makes garments out of his kidnapped women. It rubs the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose again!
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"I've Got You Under My Skin" Cole Porter in 1936
 
DaveC426913 said:
Thank Heaven for Little Girls

Each time I see a little girl
Of five, or six, or seven
I can't resist the joyous urge
To smile and say
Thank Heaven for little girls
For little girls
Get bigger everyday
Thank Heaven for little girls
They grow up
In the most delightful way
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Via a TV series like Spartacus, and its orgy of detailed bloodshed and sex -- five times more graphic than any perversion that the vilified film Caligula ever served up -- one feels that they've seen everything when it comes to pushing the envelope on television in the 21st-century. But then there is Dean Martin --- way back in the heavily censored sixties -- muddling up that conception of a smoothly linear progression...

 
C C said:
But then there is Dean Martin --- way back in the heavily censored sixties -- muddling up that conception of a smoothly linear progression...
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The stuff of nightmares. I will not sleep well tonight. Possibly the doll motif there was an influence on Don Mancini, the creator of the Chucky franchise?
 
  • Haha
Reactions: C C
Civil rights and racial equality are probably more meaningful differences between today and the 40's but OK, there's this song. It reminds me of Christmas more than anything else.
 
Pinball1970 said:
"Norwegian Wood" is pretty messed up if you read from start to finish.
If a woman does not have sex with you after a night out, it is totally uncool to set fire to the house before you leave the next morning.
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I had been listening to that song for over 50 years before I found out what it was about. Before I read a McCartney interview that explained it, I had always pictured John having a morning cup of coffee by the fireplace.
 
gmilam said:
I had been listening to that song for over 50 years before I found out what it was about. Before I read a McCartney interview that explained it, I had always pictured John having a morning cup of coffee by the fireplace.
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John was left field
 
Wizard of Whatever said:
I stopped worrying long ago about what the meanings of the songs were, and just cared whether I liked them enough to listen again.
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I often find the meanings and backgrounds of songs fascinating. "Cloudbusting" from a true story of the relationship between Wilhelm Reich and his son Peter after Reich was arrested by the government. "Comfortably Numb" was a real life experience of Roger Waters, after a doctor gave him a tranquilizer to allow him to perform with severe cramps. "In the shape of a heart" about trying to stop a suicide - and failing. "Mother and child reunion" was not about any kind of reunion, and was in fact about the death of a dog. The song was named after a dish at the Chinese restaurant Paul Simon was at after his dog died. (Chicken and egg)

Katherine Hanna, the lead singer of the band Bikini Kill, had a bandmate (Tobi Vail) who was dating Kurt Cobain in the late 1980's. Vail used a deodorant called "Teen Spirit." After a night of partying, Cobain and Vail had collapsed in a room that was slightly stinky from their sweat. Hanna found that funny and wrote "Smells like Teen Spirit" on the wall over Cobain. Cobain used that without ever knowing where it came from.

In the 1960's the British Government passed a "supertax" on very successful entertainers, partly to raise money and partly because the British government did NOT like the new rock and roll bands springing up in England. The song "Taxman" came from this.

Around 1983, Mark Knopfler was in an appliance store when he overheard two workers complaining about all the work they had to do that day. He started writing down the conversation. Almost word for word, that conversation became "Money for Nothing."
 
billvon said:
I often find the meanings and backgrounds of songs fascinating. "Cloudbusting" from a true story of the relationship between Wilhelm Reich and his son Peter after Reich was arrested by the government. "Comfortably Numb" was a real life experience of Roger Waters, after a doctor gave him a tranquilizer to allow him to perform with severe cramps. "In the shape of a heart" about trying to stop a suicide - and failing. "Mother and child reunion" was not about any kind of reunion, and was in fact about the death of a dog. The song was named after a dish at the Chinese restaurant Paul Simon was at after his dog died. (Chicken and egg)

Katherine Hanna, the lead singer of the band Bikini Kill, had a bandmate (Tobi Vail) who was dating Kurt Cobain in the late 1980's. Vail used a deodorant called "Teen Spirit." After a night of partying, Cobain and Vail had collapsed in a room that was slightly stinky from their sweat. Hanna found that funny and wrote "Smells like Teen Spirit" on the wall over Cobain. Cobain used that without ever knowing where it came from.

In the 1960's the British Government passed a "supertax" on very successful entertainers, partly to raise money and partly because the British government did NOT like the new rock and roll bands springing up in England. The song "Taxman" came from this.

Around 1983, Mark Knopfler was in an appliance store when he overheard two workers complaining about all the work they had to do that day. He started writing down the conversation. Almost word for word, that conversation became "Money for Nothing."
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I think he has changed one word in "Money for Nothing" these days just to kept it in the vein of this thread.
 
C C said:
Via a TV series like Spartacus, and its orgy of detailed bloodshed and sex -- five times more graphic than any perversion that the vilified film Caligula ever served up -- one feels that they've seen everything when it comes to pushing the envelope on television in the 21st-century. But then there is Dean Martin --- way back in the heavily censored sixties -- muddling up that conception of a smoothly linear progression...

Click to expand...
That was creepy as hell.
 
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