Music
The best Christmas music can be endlessly reinterpreted. Eartha Kitt’s “Santa Baby” might be one of those songs that covers shouldn’t reinvent too much.
The best Christmas music can be endlessly reinterpreted. Eartha Kitt’s “Santa Baby” might be one of those songs that covers shouldn’t reinvent too much. For example, two male singers decided to make massive changes to the original song. Both of these covers are beyond awful.
A punk rock ‘Santa Baby’ cover fails on multiple levels
The original “Santa Baby” is a very raunchy, heterosexual song. There’s nothing wrong with making the song gay — if you want to do it sincerely. All-male punk rock band Me First and the Gimme Gimmes decided to do a gay “Santa Baby” that’s clearly supposed to be a joke.
And what is the joke exactly? Well, the punchline seems to be that their cover is gay. That sort of humor is lightly homophobic. On top of that, punk rock instrumentation doesn’t do “Santa Baby” any favors. Also, punk rock is supposed to reject societal norms — and yet “Santa Baby” is one of the most materialistic songs ever written.
Michael Bublé’s cover might be even worse
The other worst cover of “Santa Baby” is also by a male singer. In this case, retro revivalist Michael Bublé decided to put his spin on “Santa Baby” for his album Christmas. The result is “Santa Buddy,” a track that goes out of his way to squash any homoeroticism of a man covering Kitt’s song.
In this version, Bublé calls Santa his “buddy” and his “pal,” but nothing more. He seems to be interested in Santa Claus’ presents and nothing else. Why would Bublé have covered this song if he was so uncomfortable with its subject matter? If his cover is supposed to be funny, it falls flat on its face. The only reason to listen to “Santa Buddy” is to laugh at Bublé, not with him.
Another lousy version of “Santa Baby” is Taylor Swift’s, which doesn’t understand the track’s sultry nature. However, her cover is forgivably naive as it came out early in her career. Me First and the Gimme Gimmes and Bublé knew better and they didn’t care.
1 superstar made ‘Santa Baby’ into a standard
During a 2023 interview with Songwriter, Philip Springer said he wrote “Santa Baby” for a specific artist. “Most of the songwriters that wrote hits were not commissioned like I knew Johnny Marks quite well, and he wrote ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,’ but he just did it on his own,” he recalled. “Nobody told him to write it. The commission of ‘Santa Baby’ was part of the unique thing, that is, to write a Christmas song for somebody who was the biggest star on Broadway, which Eartha Kitt was in 1953. That was unusual.”
A certain pop star changed “Satna Baby” from a one-off hit to a standard. “Keep in mind that ‘Santa Baby’ was recorded in 1953 by Eartha Kitt,” he said. “Nobody else really recorded it until 1987 when Madonna recorded it. Madonna was the first person to cover the song, believe it or not. But when Madonna recorded it, every female artist started recording ‘Santa Baby.’ That’s when the avalanche of records which we now have on ‘Santa Baby’ started, because of Madonna.”
Kitt wasn’t the only singer to release a good version of “Santa Baby” — but she set a standard some other artists didn’t match.
