Michael Bublé’s Cover of “Santa Baby” Is Peak Fragile Masculinity
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Do you fancy yourself a Michael Bublé fan? What about Christmas? Are you a fan of Christmas? Because after listening to the Canadian crooner’s seven-year-old cover version of the song “Santa Baby” for the first time, I’m not completely sure you can like both things.
It was a coworker who jokingly shared the Christmas song cover with me, which you’ll find featured on the 2011 Michael Bublé Christmas album cleverly titled … Christmas. I’m not sure what took so long for me to be introduced to this audio monstrosity, but oh, how I rue the day.
The Michael Bublé Christmas album features several holiday classics — “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” “Jingle Bells” — all of which are presented with their original (and, yeah, already moderately cloying and annoying) lyrics unchanged.
But for some reason — presumably because “Santa Baby” is sung from a woman’s perspective (it was, after all, originally recorded by Eartha Kitt) — Michael Bublé felt he just couldn’t record it without splashing some merry masculinity on top.
Here’s a sample of the lyrics from Michael Bublé’s obnoxiously bro-y cover of “Santa Baby”:
For me
I’ve been an awful good guy
Santa buddy, and hurry down the chimney tonight
Steel blue
I’ll wait up for you, dude
Santa buddy, and hurry down the chimney tonight
Think of all the hotties that I haven’t kissed
Next year I could be just as good
If you check off my Christmas listNow, when you’re done barfing up your eggnog, let’s contemplate what the frick Michael Bublé was thinking when we altered the original lyrics — not all that horrible in their own right, truly — to suit his cheesy machismo needs.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z84QdJlPpHEWhile you’re contemplating everything that you now see is wrong with the world, I’ll just be over here listening to “All I Want for Christmas Is You” and “Christmas Wrapping” multiple times each day, and watching the above video of Patti LaBelle screeching “Where my background singers?!” throughout her version of “This Christmas,” recorded at the 1996 National Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony. Because if you’re going to alter a Christmas classic, do it through misplaced cue-cards and utter confusion while singing it live.
