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A 44-Year Old Song Is the Queer Anthem of the Summer, for Better and Worse
When it comes to “Bette Davis Eyes,” Ethel Cain is the better. JoJo Siwa is the worse.
Meanwhile, alt-pop transcendentalist Ethel Cain released her new single “Fuck Me Eyes” on July 2, off of her upcoming album Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You, and she managed to freshen up the source material. Despite being the version that’s not a direct cover, it’s Cain’s track that captures the spirit of Carnes’s “Bette Davis Eyes” — they share a dreamy instrumentation and the sense of an unacknowledged queerness on the part of the narrator. In her Stepford-like aesthetic choices, and in her literal insertion of her boyfriend’s name into a song about the relationship between two women, she’s embracing a newly “straight” version of herself, and dragging “Bette Davis Eyes” back in the closet with her.
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