The song "Bette Davis Eyes'' ruled the airwaves and awards circuit in 1981, but that iteration of the popular tune was just its first remake. The song itself is actually turning 50 this year. And what better time, its original producer thought, than now for a refresh? And for its third iteration, he decided to go in a completely new direction.
"I've always trusted in the power of reinvention," producer Val Garay tells Music Times, "and with this EDM version, we're not just revisiting an iconic classic, we're giving it a vibrant new life on the dance floor."
That's right, the iconic Kim Carnes megahit, which was the Billboard No.1 song of 1981 and won Grammys for both Song of the Year and Record of the Year, has had an EDM makeover, courtesy of Garay and singer Katrina Woolverton.
"I knew Katrina's talent well enough to know she could bring her own passion to it and still honor the original, which is not easy to do," Garay, 82, said in a press statement, adding that he trusted Woolverton's knowledge of EDM and dance, which allowed him to feel more adventurous while rerecording the song.
Woolverton may not be a household name, but she's been a recurring presence on the dance charts. She began her career in 1989 by winning Star Search (and beating out future R&B star Aaliyah!), but in 2012 she told the site Culture Brats that as a 12-year-old, "I just wanted to enjoy growing up and being a kid."
Woolverton's first original music releases came in 2011 when Garay helped produce her album In the Blink of an Eye. Charting songs since then have included her dance-pop song "OPM," the bluesy "Shame on Me," the Katy Perry-penned "Watch Me Walk Away," and the electropop "Ready to Love."
She'd taken some time away, though, and wasn't feeling open to making music again the way that she had in the past. "I was in a mindset where I had kind of put recording new music on the backburner," Woolverton said in a press release. But after spending last summer sailboat racing by day and listening to electronic dance music by night, inspiration struck.
"When I came to Val with my idea of redoing 'Bette Davis Eyes' with an EDM influence, much to my surprise, he said yes," Woolverton said. "For him to 'gift' me such an iconic song, trust me with it, and then be such a close collaborator in the studio is amazing."
The Origins of "Bette Davis Eyes"
Songwriters Donna Weiss and Jackie DeShannon first wrote "Bette Davis Eyes" in 1974 for DeShannon's album New Arrangement. DeShannon, whose first hit was the 1965 Burt Bacharach and Hal David song "What the World Needs Now Is Love" and who had been one of the opening acts when the Beatles first toured the U.S., released a bouncier version of "Bette Davis Eyes" that had honky-tonk piano licks and a rowdy backing band of pedal steel guitar and horns.
When Kim Carnes was working on her sixth studio album, 1981's Mistaken Identity, Val Garay came on as her producer. The demo he was working from was spare -- just Carnes' raspy Rod Stewart-esque vocal confidently seducing the listener.
Garay, who had previously worked with artists like James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, and Bonnie Raitt, said he started by giving the track a slowed down, folksy treatment because he knew that that more closely aligned with DeShannon's musical background than even her released version of the song did. He then asked Carnes' keyboard player, Bill Cuomo, to come up with the now classic throughline riff for the song.
Incredibly, the synth-driven Kim Carnes arrangement was recorded in one single take, Garay told Bonnie Forward last year. "All live vocal, nothing is overdubbed," he said. "It's all live."
That now-classic version spent nine non-consecutive weeks atop the Hot 100, and the Golden Era Hollywood legend herself, who was 73 at the time, sent personal letters to Carnes, Weiss, and DeShannon, thanking them for making her "a part of modern times."
A Classic Revisited, Decades Later
Fifty years after Weiss and DeShannon wrote their ode to a strong-willed, alluring temptress, and four decades since it took the world by storm, there's certainly an appeal to entertaining an update. And bringing Ms. Davis even farther into modern times by way of one of the most popular genres of the 21st century is a solid pitch.
But Garay's reworking played it safe, and to middling effect. Considering the original's extensive use of synths, something dramatic needed to happen to move the needle into a distinctly EDM zone. Production wise, the intro and much of the first half of the song sounds remarkably unchanged. Sure Carnes' percussive shakers have been replaced with electronic hi-hats and the steady four-on-the-floor pulse is more pronounced, but the anticipated build-up and beat drop -- a hallmark of the EDM genre -- is essentially nonexistent.
Woolverton's vocal is strong and her assured belting has a markedly different tone to it than Carnes' easy raspiness -- it's perhaps the most immediate way to tell that this is a wholly separate recording. Woolverton certainly pays homage to Carnes throughout, particularly in her mimicked delivery of lyrics like "ferocious" and "precocious," and it seems as though she possibly threw in a little nod to Madonna as well. The stilted, spoken intonation of "Bette. Davis." in Woolverton's interludes sounds as though it could have been lifted directly from the middle-eight of 1990's "Vogue."
Ultimately, this dance arrangement, which should perhaps be more accurately billed as EDM-Lite, isn't likely to replace Carnes' version on party playlists. (Consider that the 1981 track did chart at No. 26 on Billboard's Dance Chart!) But it's a nice addition to Woolverton's repertoire, and if it serves as the catalyst to get her back in the studio, then we're sure that Bette Davis would have appreciated her efforts as well.
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