What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve? is a popular song written in 1947 by Frank Loesser and published by Famous Music. It was first recorded by Margaret Whiting in 1947, and The Orioles had the first charting version, reaching No. 9 on Billboard’s Best-Selling Retail Rhythm & Blues chart in December 1949. The lyric tells of a singer who is deeply in love and asks what the beloved will be doing on New Year’s Eve, hinting at a future commitment and showing that Loesser didn’t intend it strictly as a December song. Over the years it has been recorded by many artists and has appeared on numerous Christmas albums, including Ella Fitzgerald’s Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas (1960), Diana Krall’s Christmas Songs (2005), Barbra Streisand’s Christmas Memories (2001), Rod Stewart’s Merry Christmas, Baby (2012), and Norah Jones’s I Dream of Christmas (2021). The tune is considered a holiday standard and continues to be covered across genres by artists from jazz to pop.
