What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve? —Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival 2025-26

 Zooey Deschanel's and Joseph Gordon-Levitt's seemingly impromptu home video of them singing What are You Doing New Year's Eve?  went viral in  2011 and boosted the song to pop standard status. 

Back in the day everyone who was not a misanthrope or a shut-in went out on New Year’s Eve.  The toffs wore their white ties and tails or elegant evening gowns and furs to don paper hats and dance the night way to orchestras in sprawling Art Deco ballrooms.  At least that is what all the old movies taught the rest of the Depression and war-weary populous.  But those average Joes and Jills also went out and celebrated with their own funny hats and noise makers in dance halls, lodge halls, piano bars, and neighborhood saloons.  And it was not just attractive young people.  Period photographs reveal that revelers included many middle-aged and older couples. 

For those who were not married or already romantically involved, the question what are you doing on New Year’s Eve? was of vital importance.  Nobody wanted to be alone on New Year’s Eve and everyone wanted someone to kiss at the stroke of midnight.  That is what songwriter Frank Loesser had in mind in 1947 when he made the question into a song—What are You Doing New Year’s Eve?  Although it was performed on radio shows that often featured the popular composer’s work, it didn’t become a hit until 1949 when the early doo-wap group The Orioles hit #9 on Billboard’s Retail Rhythm & Blues chart. 

New Year's Eve--the dream.

Despite that success, the song did not become an instant standard or holiday favorite.  In fact, it languished seldom recorded until Nancy Wilson hit #17 on Billboard’s Christmas Singles chart in 1965.  Two years later, the same recording returned to the Holiday Chart.  Wilson’s silky and sexy, take helped make the song a something of a jazz standard sung by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole. 

Ordinary folk whooped it up in lodge halls and neighborhood joints.

But the song still didn’t register as a pop standard until the new century and streaming video from YouTube made it go viral.  In 2011 an utterly charming impromptu duet with Zooey Deschanel and actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt made a splash and ultimately attracted almost 25 million hits. 

 

Baby it’s Cold Outside—Controversial Not a Christmas Song—Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival 2025-‘22

                                        Johnny Mercer and Margaret Whiting on Capitol Records was just one of a slew of successful covers released in 1948-'50.  

With much of the U.S. now fully experiencing freezing cold and/or snow, it’s time to consider those pop songs that really have nothing to do with Christmas but have become staples of holiday play lists.  Among the most enduring of these Winter songs is the playful duet Baby it’s Cold Outside.  But now it is caught up in controversy.  

The song had its origin in 1944 when Frank Loesser, a Hollywood lyricist turned composer, wrote it as a novelty to sing at cocktail parties with his wife Lynn Garland.  At the time Loesser was in the Army Airforce but based in California where he penned songs for war effort broadcasts and moral boosting films including Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition, What Do You Do in the Infantry and others.  Some of the songs also made it to Hollywood films like They’re Either Too Young or Too Old for the 1943 film Thank Your Lucky Stars. 

Frank Loesser and his wife Lynn Garland entertained Hollywood pals with their personal song, Baby it's Cold Outside.

Baby it’s Cold Outside proved so popular among their friends that Lynn Garland objected to offers to buy “our song.”  But after the success of Loesser’s first Broadway musical, Where’s Charley starring Ray Bolger in 1948, the offers became too lucrative to turn down.  He sold the song to MGM which featured it in the 1949 film Neptune’s Daughter performed by Ricardo Montalbán and Esther Williams and in a role reversal version by Red Skelton and Betty Garrett.  The song was the highlight of the film and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Song. 

That year in addition to versions by Montalbán and William and by Loesser and his wife—billed as Mrs. Frank Loesser, almost a dozen covers were released including four that climbed into the upper reaches of the pop charts and stayed there for weeks—Don Cornell and Laura Leslie with the Sammy Kaye Orchestra, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Jordan, Dinah Shore and Buddy Clark, and by Margaret Whiting and Johnny Mercer. 

Baby it's Cold Outside performed by Esther Williams and Ricardo Montalban won the Oscar for Best Song in 1949.

Since then, the song has been covered or included in TV shows countless times featuring a wide variety of duet partners.  Among the most noted versions were by Dean Martin with a female chorus and later with various partners on his TV series and specials, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, Brian Setzer and Ann-Margret, Zooey Deschanel and Leon Redbone, Willie Nelson and Norah Jones, Lady Gaga and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood. 

The song was always considered a bit coyly risqué but good-hearted fun. 

But in the #MeToo era it drew criticism that it is essentially a date rape song and a classic example of a man refusing to accept a woman’s no.  The main point of contention is the woman’s line, “say what’s in this drink?” and protests that she has to go home.  In response, WDOK in Cleveland announced that it was removing all versions of the song from its holiday playlist.  Some other US stations followed and in Canada it was banned by Bell Media, CBC Radio, and Rogers Media which together represent the bulk of Canadian stations. 

The bans stirred a veracious backlash.  Right wingers, or course, painted them as an example of the infamous but non-existent War on Christmas despite the fact the song has nothing to do with Christmas.  Other fans of the song were simply vexed that it has fallen victim to political correctness, whatever that is. 

In reaction to the controversy John Legend and Kelly Clarkson did a "revised" version which they insisted was not "politically correct" but was more respectful.  They were all over TV and cable programs with it and it was a radio hit.

Susan Loesser, the daughter of the composer, leapt to the defense of her parents and the song insisting that it was never a date rape song.  She said the controversy began when comedian Bill Cosby was accused of drugging and raping scores of women over decades.  Both Saturday Night Live and South Park featured skits with Cosby crooning the song to a victim. 

But Susan pointed out that in 1944 “People used to say ‘what’s in this drink, as a joke. You know, ‘this drink is going straight to my head so what’s in this drink?’ Back then it didn’t mean ‘you drugged me.’”  Others noted that despite the woman’s initial demurrals in the end she wants to stay. 

Dean Martin’s now 78-year-old daughter Deana Martin also defended the song and insisted that she would continue to perform it in her own act. 

Although I understand the objections to the song and am loathe to dismiss them out of hand, I also believe that songs can be sung and considered for the times in which they were composed.  A hell of a lot of music from classic opera to County & Western cry-in-your-beer juke box favorites, to blues and rap would have to be sacrificed along with this novelty song. And I am just not a fan of censorship in general. 

But you be the judge. 

My personal favorite version of the song was the one by Johnny Mercer and Margaret Whiting.