From "Bette Davis" to "Fuck Me Eyes"
Kim Carnes' 1981 Sapphic classic gets re-upped by Jojo Siwa and Ethel Cain.
In a twist of interesting timing, both JoJo Siwa and Ethel Cain have introduced a cover of Kim Carnes’ 1981 classic “Bette Davis Eyes” as part of their live shows over the last year. Now JoJo seems to be gearing up to release it as a single, or at the very least, threatening to post it on Spotify.
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Kim Carnes’s rendition of the Donna Weiss and Jackie DeShannon track won the Grammy for Song of the Year and Record of the Year in 1982. Needless to say, its iconic synth intro sparks enthusiasm in any local karaoke bar. Although the song has been covered many times over the past 30 years, it seems more notable to me that queer women like Jojo and Ethel, both born long after the song’s peak popularity, are revisiting it in 2025.
“Bette Davis Eyes” has always rung a little Sapphic — Kim Carnes’ raspy, chesty vocals were compared to Rod Stewart’s at the time, adding to the gender fuckery that was a song about a woman, sang by a woman, featured on an album called Mistaken Identity, no less. Invoking not only the iconic Bette Davis but queer icon Greta Garbo nine years before Madonna namedropped her in “Vogue,” sealed the deal: “Bette Davis Eyes” has a place in the Sapphic songbook.
The woman at the center of “Bette Davis Eyes” is no shrinking violet — she’ll tease you, unease you, take a tumble on you, roll you like you were dice, expose you, snow you, offer feed with the crumbs she throws you. She’s precocious and ferocious, and all of this tenacity makes for someone with a lot of nerve — the kind you had to have to be a gay woman in and long before 1981.
Kim Carnes isn’t queer but that doesn’t matter — “Bette Davis Eyes” was just one in a long line of songs about women, sung by women that were claimed by the Sapphics as relevant to their interests: “Margie,” “Dinah,” “Minnie the Moocher,” “Sweet Georgia Brown,” “Chloe,” “Liza,” “Emmie,” “Joanna.” Even if they weren’t performed initially and/or written by women, lesbians and other gender outlaws would perform their wink-and-nod versions at queer cabarets and speakeasies, often in drag. Which is why it’s somewhat apropos to see JoJo Siwa performing the song in high-femme drag, pearl necklaces and all.
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