Song: It’s Cold Outside
Artist: The Choir
Year: 1966
Though it is often considered to be a classic of the garage rock era, The Choir’s “It’s Cold Outside” exists as something separate from the raw, fuzzbox aggression usually associated with the genre’s original boom in the mid-1960s. With its breezy melodic drive and Beatle-esque harmonies, the song is an unabashed nod to the sunny tunefulness of the British Invasion groups who began storming the American musical landscape just a couple of years earlier.
Despite the teenage simplicity of its lovelorn lyrical content, its forceful intro beat, busy bass guitar and strong harmonic sensibilities make “It’s Cold Outside” as worthy a forebear of power-pop as any of the similar works being recorded at the time by the likes of The Kinks, The Who and The Small Faces. Though it was a chart-topper for six weeks in the band’s hometown of Cleveland, The Choir’s debut single peaked at a rather lowly No. 68 in the national Billboard Charts.
Shortly after the recording of “It’s Cold Outside,” the departure of the song’s composer Dann Klawon led to a series of line-up changes and a haphazard remainder of the group’s brief career; the band reformed late in 1968 after breaking up in the spring of the same year but a series of unsuccessful singles led to The Choir’s final dissolution in 1970.
Scott Hammond