Daughter of 'Baby, It's Cold Outside' Composer Defends Song: 'Bill Cosby Ruined It for Everybody'

But in recent years the lyrics have raised eyebrows with lines like, “Say, what’s in this drink?” and a back-and-forth where a man tries to convince a woman to stay the night despite her continued protests — “I really can’t,” and “The answer is no.”

At the end last month, WDOK Christmas 102.1 in Cleveland, Ohio pulled the song from its 24-hour Christmas rotation because of listener complaints, according tolocal Fox 8 news. The station allegedly received a call complaining about the song. After a listener poll on the WDOK website supported this sentiment, station programmers decided to ban it. Several other networks followed suit, though some — namely San Francisco’s KOIT — have since reinstated it.

Though he died in 1969, Susan Loesser believes her father would be “furious” that some stations banned the song. “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 … Absolutely I get it. But I think it would be good if people looked at the song in the context of the time. It was written in 1944.”

source: people.com