Unpacking Michael ‘No Homo’ Bublé’s Santa Baby

ID: the album cover of Michael Bublé's Christmas CD.

(Alleged) heterosexual Michael ‘No Homo’ Bublé is a heterosexual singer who sings heterosexual songs and is the heterosexual love of many of our mum’s lives. No homo, though.

Prior to Christmas 2011, I had no strong feelings on the man. If anything, I had a fondness for his jazzy lilt and fun surname (also, as a child, I thought he was the same person as Michael Jackson but we don’t talk about that…). However, the release of Bublé’s 2011 Christmas CD was possibly one of the worst moments of my childhood (and trust me, that’s saying something) because it introduced me to objectively one of the worst songs in existence: Bublé’s cover of ‘Santa Baby’.

Baby Me intensely disliked the famous 1953 Christmas Song, ‘Santa Baby’ by Eartha Kitt. To be honest, I think I was onto something because it’s a highly uncomfortable 3 minutes 26 seconds of listening to a sexy Kitt try to seduce Santa… and I don’t want to think about Santa fucking anyone (including his canonical wife) let alone a 26-year-old Kitt. For Baby Me, the song couldn’t get much worse.

Then Bublé’s version got released and my mum insisted on playing the CD for Decembers years thereafter and I wondered what I’d done for the universe to punish me so cruelly. His cover is more akin to a parody; he pours his heart out to Santa in a song about deep, yearning desire… but sike, no homo bro <3

As is the case with many songs covered by singers of a different gender to the original, Bublé changes every ‘girl’ to ‘guy’ – so, “I’ve been an awful good girl” changes to “I’ve been an awful good guy” and so on. He’s not like other girls… he’s a guy.

Not content with that, however, he de-homoifies the song to an almost suspicious extent. He keeps the first ‘Santa baby’ but quickly gets uncomfortable with the sexy pet names. ‘Santa baby’ becomes ‘Santa buddy’ (bad), ‘Santa pally’ (badder), and ‘Santa poppy’ (baddest). He establishes very clearly that, unlike Kitt, Santa is not a love interest – rather, a mate. Or potentially a sugar daddy. But definitely not a lover. That’d be gay.

ID: Michael Bublé performing in London.

Bublé manages the difficult achievement of singing four (4) words before getting worried about seeming gay and changing the lyrics. He requests Santa leave him a Rolex under the tree, rather than a sable (because he’s a straight man and straight men don’t like fashion… only expensive watches…) and also wants a different car to Kitt. I don’t understand cars but I googled it and it turns out the internet also doesn’t know why Bublé asks Santa for a ’65 convertible when, in the original, Kitt asks for a ’54 convertible. Maybe it’s just another example of Bublé not being like other girls? What makes more sense is that Bublé wants a ‘steel blue’ car. As we all know, ‘blue’ is a masculine colour. Kitt’s original song asks Santa for a ‘light blue’ car, but that’s a bit too feminine and, of course, Bublé has to one-up her. Just to make sure that everyone knows he’s a straight man (no homo), he wants his car to be a darker blue.

Bublé gives Santa the bro treatment, referring to him as ‘dude’ rather than ‘dear’. He depicts how he’s forsaken so many ‘hotties’ (because why would he kiss ‘fellas’? That would be gay??) and claims he’s been a ‘sweetie’ all year. Perhaps because the original (‘I’ve been an angel all year’) is too feminine? Angels are typically associated with women which led me to think, for most of my childhood, that Angel Gabriel was a woman. This is quite embarrassing when you consider that I was raised Catholic and went to Church every week. Anyway, the point is that even though in biblical canon there are male angels, I guess Bublé wanted to emphasise that he’s definitely not feminine in any way at all? In case he hasn’t done it enough throughout the song?

ID: Eartha Kitt, the original singer of the 1953 song.

I hate the end of the song more than I hate the start, which is saying something. Kitt wants her stocking to be filled with ‘a duplex and checks/ Sign your “x” on the line’. To be honest, I never understood this line as a child but I now realise she’s asking for a house. I have googled Bublé’s lyric, ‘fill my stocking with Canucks tix for kicks, throw me on the first line’. I think this is an ice hockey reference? Not quite sure about why he’s changed it? Maybe because he’s a masculine sporty gym bro? Ladz ladz ladz and that. He also wants Christmas tree decorations from ‘Mercedes’ rather than ‘Tiffanys’ because he can drive! He’s a man! Driving is masculine! And, for the same reason, he doesn’t want a ‘ring’… he wants ‘cha ching’. According to Bublé, only women wear rings <3

If his goal is to sound straight, he achieves the opposite. He would've sounded less gay if he'd just embraced Santa as a baby (uwu) rather than suspiciously drawing attention to himself. With the end of the Christmas period approaching, I can draw a sigh of relief that I won’t have to hear this atrocity for another eleven months. The whole song is unhinged (but not in a gay way) and makes me hate Christmas! If you’ve not had the displeasure of hearing this song… run far away and never look back! Save yourself while you can!

Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate, I hope you had a Bublé-Buddy--free Christmas xx

Lina (she/they)