Idina Menzel and Michael Bublé are getting into the holiday spirit a tad early, releasing a video their new duet of “Baby It’s Cold Outside” in which they concede the spotlight to a pair of adorable tweens waltzing around a vintage hotel.
In many ways, the video hits it out of the park. It’s got both nostalgia and youth, plus Menzel and Bublé’s powerhouse vocals to carry you along. The performance even manages to avoid the non-PG nature of the song and the sexual assault overtones with a few key lyrical switches, so we thankfully don’t see children singing about slipping something into someone’s drink.
The duet is one in a long line of oddball and adorable pairs singing the holiday classic together, drawing from an extensive list of duets of the song since its rise to popularity in 1949. You’ve got Lady Gaga and Joseph Gordon-Levitt doing a genderswapped number during Gaga’s Muppets’ Holiday Spectacular in 2013, with Gordon-Levitt taking the demure role to Gaga’s persuader. There’s also the genderbent version done by Kurt and Blaine on Glee in their first few episodes opposite each other that set off a tradition of holiday episode duets between the pair until Glee went off the rails last year.
What’s clear is the song works best when you don’t try to be too on-the-nose about it, securing a spot for Menzel and Bublé in the modern canon, even if their moment is relatively sanitized. Sometimes you just need that Christmas jolt, even if it’s not Thanksgiving yet.
Screengrab via Idina Menzel/YouTube
