{"id":28340,"date":"2019-10-29T08:28:13","date_gmt":"2019-10-29T14:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/?p=28340"},"modified":"2019-10-29T08:22:24","modified_gmt":"2019-10-29T14:22:24","slug":"john-legend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/john-legend\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby, It\u2019s Criminal How They Exploit Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Legend is going all-in to profit off his Christmas<\/a> album from 2018, A Legendary Christmas<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

A deluxe version of the album is soon to be released and it is being hyped by capitalizing on the great Christmas<\/a> music controversy of 2018.<\/p>\n

The song Baby, It\u2019s Cold Outside<\/em> was banned on a handful of radio<\/a> stations in 2018 due to lyrics that somehow escaped the notice of the public for, oh, about 70 years.<\/p>\n

Christmas<\/a> 2018 was the high-water mark in the #Me-too movement and the lyrics of Baby, It\u2019s Cold Outside<\/em> bristled the sensibilities of radio<\/a> program directors still playing the song.<\/p>\n

It was famously pulled from airwaves with grandstanding press releases fueled by the media.<\/p>\n

Now Legend is collaborating with Kelly Clarkson to \u201cre-imagine\u201d the song in bringing out his \u201cdeluxe\u201d version of last year\u2019s album. New lyrics now include:<\/p>\n

\u201cI really can\u2019t stay (Baby it\u2019s cold outside)\/I\u2019ve gotta go away (I can call you a ride)\/This evening has been (So glad that you dropped in)\/So very nice (Time spent with you is paradise)\/My mother will start to worry (I\u2019ll call a car and tell \u2019em to hurry).\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Wait. It gets worse:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kelly: \u201cWhat will my friends think\u2026\u201d
\nJohn: \u201cI think they should rejoice\u201d
\nKelly: \u201c\u2026if I have one more drink?\u201d
\nJohn: \u201cIt\u2019s your body, and your choice.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Legend purportedly re-wrote the lyrics with the help of comedian Natasha Rothwell.<\/p>\n

There is, of course, a lot more to this story conveniently overlooked by Legend and all those promoting the re-release of his tepidly received Christmas<\/a> album of last year (it topped the holiday charts in a year of weak Christmas<\/a> releases).<\/p>\n

As the season advanced a backlash against radio<\/a> stations banning the song caused those stations to reverse course and put the song back on the air.<\/p>\n

Like it or not, the song \u2013 which technically rates as a Christmas<\/a> song only because it has been included on countless Christmas<\/a> albums before \u2013 has been performed by the likes of Louis Armstrong, Eddie Fisher, Sammy Davis Jr, Dean Martin, Ray Charles, Al Hirt, Steve Lawrence, Henry Mancini, Barry Manilow, Bette Midler, Lou Rawls, Vanessa Williams, Tom Jones, Suzy Bogguss, Harry Connick Jr, Jessica Simpson, Rod Stewart, James Taylor, Willie Nelson, Colbie Caillat and an endless list of others.<\/p>\n

Frankly speaking, with that broad array of recorded musical styles it has to be hard to keep the song off the air.<\/p>\n

But interestingly enough all the hype and controversy of the song in 2018 led to a 70% increase in downloads of the song last Christmas<\/a><\/strong> (by whichever artists).<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s no wonder Legend is doing this. He\u2019s got albums to sell, after all.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the point. This isn\u2019t a statement of anything more than commercializing Christmas<\/a> further.<\/p>\n

Legend doesn\u2019t stand behind any kind of cause. There isn\u2019t any kind of donation to charitable causes tied to women. It\u2019s all to profit John Legend.<\/p>\n

In fact, if he so cared about the issue maybe he wouldn\u2019t have released the song \u201cShe Don\u2019t Need to Know<\/em>\u201d, an anthem of cheating released in 2007 (pre-dating a very public spectacle about alleged infidelity to his partner, Chrissy Teigen).<\/p>\n

In other words, spare us, John Legend (and Kelly Clarkson).<\/p>\n

Baby It\u2019s Cold Outside<\/em> is like any other kind of song. It tells a story. If you don\u2019t like the story, don\u2019t tell it.<\/p>\n

To \u201cre-imagine\u201d a classic is a slap in the face to the original creators of the song and to those, who for whatever innocent reasons, continue to listen to it every holiday season.<\/p>\n

For years the public has endured an assault on Christmas<\/a> music as traditional tunes of a sacred nature have been banned in public performances at schools and in veteran hospitals and care facilities.<\/p>\n

2018 marked the first time that secular Christmas<\/a> songs came under fire. (Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer was also targeted for banning in 2018).<\/p>\n

Legend\u2019s album, which contained only safe secular music of Christmas<\/a>, did nothing to advance the good messaging of love<\/a> at Christmas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This new take on Baby It\u2019s Cold Outside<\/em> does nothing to rectify that.<\/p>\n

In fact, it insults the intelligence of audiences who are weary of the moralizing of celebrities who speak \u2013 and sing \u2013 out of both sides of their mouths.<\/p>\n

Baby It\u2019s Cold Outside<\/em> will live on as it was performed by Dean Martin or Frank Sinatra or Michael Buble because those artists didn\u2019t make the song about them and their so-called morals. It was about art.<\/p>\n

Legend and Clarkson aren\u2019t doing this for art. They are continuing to advance a message that the public has clearly rejected.<\/p>\n

When it comes to John Legend and Kelly Clarkson\u2019s version time will prove it to be a farce and a money-grab.<\/p>\n

Nothing more.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Legend is going all-in to profit off his Christmas album from 2018, A Legendary Christmas. A deluxe version of the album is soon to be released and it is being hyped by capitalizing on the great Christmas music controversy of 2018. The song Baby, It\u2019s Cold Outside was banned on a handful of radio […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":28341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","iawp_total_views":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christmas-music","category-christmas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}