Let’s Talk About Michael Buble’s Terrible No-Homo Cover of Santa Baby
It’s early November — Starbucks have whipped out less-controversial-than-before holiday cups, outdoor ice skating rinks are reopening, and Christmas music is now playing in basically every store I walk into. And with the return of dulcet, holiday tunes, comes the return of Canada’s favorite jazz crooner — Michael Buble.
It is an indisputable fact that Michael Buble is the King of Christmas Music. If you have a holiday favorite (or least favorite) that is even mildly jazzy, Buble has almost certainly sung it on one of his, like, 900 Christmas albums. This includes songs that are, perhaps, slightly illogical for him to cover.
Which brings us to Santa Baby.
Love it or hate it, Santa Baby is as inescapable as Buble himself. Sex icon and best-ever Catwoman Eartha Kitt sang it, Madonna sang it, and probably a bunch of other doe-eyed wannabe sex icons have also sung it. The basic premise of the song for those of you who somehow have never heard it is that a woman is coyly offering to fuck Santa if he brings her a lot of stuff. She never explicitly tells Santa she will fuck him, but, come on. We all know, Eartha. We all know.
However you feel about this premise (personally, I feel kinda skeevy) it’s decidedly a song about sleeping with a man for material possessions.
This, inherently, does not prevent Buble from covering it. It was 2011 when he released the album his cover is on, and while I wouldn’t describe society as whole as cool with gay people, we definitely knew they existed. Lots of artists cover songs without changing the pronouns, turning heterosexual songs into gay songs. It’s not that weird of a thing to do.
Unless, of course, you are like Michael Buble, and Very Very Straight
I’m not sure if you guys know this, but Buble? Buble is a straight dude. Buble is a tit man. He got married in 2011, the same year as this song. To a woman. And not just any woman. But a model. It doesn’t get more Heterosexual than that, you guys. Buble? Not gay. Sure, okay, he wears impeccably tailored suits and sings jazz tunes with a voice that sounds like someone dipped it in honey, but that doesn’t make him gay, for God’s sake.
Now, if you’re comfortable with your sexuality, you probably don’t really care about sounding a little gay when you sing a song. I often sing love songs originally written by men about women in the shower, and I do not change the pronoun, because three minutes of singing about a woman will not magically transform me into a lesbian. (Maybe this is the gay agenda? If it is, congrats, it’s working.)
But Buble cares, okay? Buble is Straight, and he does not want anyone, for even one minute, to think otherwise.
(Of course, I suppose there is a different scale between me and Buble, who’s albums sell millions of copies. But look, one of the One Direction boys sang the girl part of that Wheetus song Teeange Dirtbag, and tween girls literally write fanfiction about them, so if you’re more uncomfortable than they are you really should reevaluate your life.)
At no point, apparently, did anyone on Buble’s team suggest that, perhaps, if he’s uncomfortable sounding gay, he shouldn’t cover a song where the literal premise is sleeping with a man in order to get lots of things. Because Buble went ahead with his cover of Santa Baby. He just tweaked a few lines.
Santa Baby now becomes Santa Buddy, and the girly gifts of the original are swapped out for more masculine gifts — a sable fur for a Rolex, Tiffany decorations for ones from . . . Mercedes? The car company? What are you putting on your tree, Michael Buble, car fobs? What kind of dumbass tree is that?
In the process of writing this I discovered that Michael Buble is actually a spokesperson for Rolex. I don’t know if that started before or after his Santa Baby name drop. Is this entire thing just a stealth marketing campaign for Rolex and Mercedes?
He also makes more inexplicable updates, including swapping out Ertha’s ‘54 convertible for a ‘65 convertible. Was ’54 a gay year? He also changes the car from a girly, womanly light blue, to a much manlier and tougher steel blue, which, for the record, is also a light blue color. Eartha, in her original, asked Santa to sign some checks for her. There is nothing I can find that’s explicitly sexual or gay about checks, unless I’m missing something here, but Buble decides to switch this too. Instead he asks for Canucks tickets.
Look, Buble, I’m not trying to nitpick here, but Canucks tickets? The Canucks suck! They’ve never even won a Stanley Cup! I know you’re Canadian but come on dude, aim higher. Also, I would argue that this is actually a gayer choice than the original. You could have gotten simple, easy money, but instead you asked to go watch a bunch of men slam each other violently into walls.
Oh, also, he swaps out the line “think of all the fellas I haven’t kissed” to “think of all the hotties I haven’t kissed.” Ladies is also two syllables, but there’s truly nothing Straighter than disrespecting women.
That line brings me to a bigger, deeper problem I have with Buble’s Santa Baby. In the original, the relationship between the singer and Santa is clear. They bang, she gets stuff. But here there’s a giant grey area. Santa is Buble’s buddy, (or pal, or dude, or poppy whatever that is), but somehow Buble still has held back from macking on all the hotties throwing themselves at his perpetual five o’clock shadow for Santa’s sake. What’s up with that? What kind of friend doesn’t want you to kiss people? Are Michael Buble and Santa in some sort of weird, nonsexual sugar daddy situation where they don’t sleep together but it’s agreed that Buble won’t sleep with women, either? And if so, why? Are Canucks tickets that important to Buble? The Canucks probably will give you tickets for free if you asked, Michael, you’re like the tenth most famous Canadian.
Also, now that I think about it, hotties is actually a more gender-neutral term than ladies would have been. Is Buble leading Santa on by dangling the possibility that they might, one day, be more than buddies? That perhaps, in spite of his heterosexuality, Buble might be willing to go gay for Santa? If so this is a truly cruel song, Michael. Santa is a good man. Don’t toy with his heart like this.
Look, I know what you’re thinking. This song came out six years ago. Why do I care so much?
I care so much because it is dumb. It’s dumb, and bad, and I hate it.
I suppose it’s possible that Buble and his team thought this was all a very funny joke, but I just doubt it. He’s too sincere of a singer to pull this type of thing off, and if you’re going to parody No Homo Culture you have to go full throttle and really parody it, instead of just participating in it. (For a good example, check out the Lonely Island’s No Homo.)
What I really think happened was that Buble wanted to cover Santa Baby while also making sure you had no doubt in your mind that he was straight. But here lies the inherent problem with going aggressively no-homo. It makes you seem kinda gay, or at least very insecure.
I suppose we’ll never truly know why these terrible decisions were made, and how no one at any point said that this was a dumb, bad idea. Was it meant to be a parody? Was it sincere and poorly aimed? Was it secretly a ploy to get Buble a Rolex partnership? Does Michael Buble regret it?
I can’t tell you. But I can tell you this: Michael Buble would definitely go gay for free Canuck’s tickets.
