“Oh Mickey, you’re so fine / You’re so fine you blow my mind / Hey Mickey, hey Mickey.” Words of glistening prose straight out of the mouth of Toni Basil, in her 1982 hit ‘Mickey’. Or as I like to the think of her – the post-modern Tennyson. But sadly, these gracefully chanted lines were not straight from her own pen.
Her number two hit was actually a cover of Racey’s ‘Kitty’. And not even an original one. She kept the warbling organs, threw in the catchy chant, usurped Kitty and replaced her with Mickey. Sheer musical innovation, no? And since then? Despite having released only two albums, Basil has still somehow released five ‘Best Of’s’. She has now shifted her talents to film, but we have yet to hear anything musical from her since 1983. She recently confessed she still owns the infamous cheerleading sweater from the Mickey video – maybe at 71 it’s time for her to give it another outing?
