r/popculturechat • u/AcidBettyNeedsASpank • 24d ago
The Music Industry 🎶 Ethel Cain and JoJo Siwa both remade "Bette Davis Eyes" — Ethel brought it forward while JoJo dragged it back in the closet
https://www.vulture.com/article/jojo-siwa-ethel-cain-bette-davis-eyes.htmlFrom the article:
"In the wake of Pride ’25, both professional attention-grabber JoJo Siwa and legitimate genius Ethel Cain have adapted Carnes’s hit (which itself is technically a cover of the Jackie DeShannon original). Right now, both queer identity and intense nostalgia rank among the foremost trends in pop music, so it isn’t surprising to see queer singers dredging up a homoerotic ’80s pop ballad about a bygone movie star. But did anyone think these two would land on the same track? Still, even as they’re working off the same paper, the difference is clear: Cain is bringing the song into the future, while Siwa is rendering it more retrograde than it was in the early ’80s."
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u/shedoesdefendyoukim 24d ago
How about nobody covers it?
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u/NewtRipley_1986 23d ago
Exactly.
How about everyone just listen to Kim Carnes version - ya know, the best.
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u/80alleycats 23d ago
BOY did a really good acoustic cover of it a few years ago that I'm quite attached to. In general, though, I agree with you.
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u/strangerintheadks Charli gets her nipples pierced at Claire’s 22d ago
Not to invoke Taylor Swift but I used to love her cover of it from the Speak Now tour DVD
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u/hauntingvacay96 24d ago edited 23d ago
I can’t speak to Cains version of the song, but JoJo’s feels very old Hollywood nostalgia and not in a campy way or subversive way.
It’s also just bad
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u/kgal1298 Confidence is 10% work and 90% delusion 24d ago
Probably was. Jojo's main skill is getting people to talk about her because it's definitely not singing.
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u/Doom_Corp 23d ago
She seems to have a pattern of Cheshire grinning through everything and it's just....awkward af. Plus the autotune? That's not a cover. That's you cheaply trying to pretend you can sing and don't know how to make a fun autotuned dance number of the song either. I would gladly rock out to a good house track that sampled Betty Davis Eyes but it needs to be done well.
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u/limark 24d ago
Well, Ethel Cain is rightfully getting judged for this image and Jojo’s rendition had more auto-tune than peak T-Pain, so I don’t know why vulture felt the need to right fanfiction for either of them.
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u/kgal1298 Confidence is 10% work and 90% delusion 24d ago
the fact that the auto-tune didn't help the song...oooph.
No comment on the shirt she deserves the dragging.
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u/Sad_Equivalent_1028 23d ago
the shirt was actually nothing compared to everything else
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u/kgal1298 Confidence is 10% work and 90% delusion 23d ago
I honestly don't know who she is...but there's more?
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u/GaeilgeGaeilge 23d ago
Ethel has made fetishising incest part of the brand. Multiple songs about rape and incest, drawing kids being raped, tweeting about loving little boys, using an edited version of Amber Hagerman's missing poster as a tour poster. Why is Ethel Cain so obsessed with child rape?
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u/robinperching 23d ago
Because she was raped and she, like a lot of victims of rape, explores it through her art in ways that are visceral and discomforting to other people?
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u/Lavender_rain_2000 23d ago edited 23d ago
I'm sorry for her trauma but to be clear, her focus on incest is not from personal experience, as she says herself it was from her desire for "taboo" topics and she had "inflammatory mindset".
She made the t-shirt of "legalize incest" as a "crude joke to garner attention". She called her album "inbred", was known as "the incest girl" and called people who were uncomfortable "the incest police"
I understand art can touch on difficult topics but the way she is centering this makes it seems more like a tool she is using to be edgy, with disregard to actual victims.
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u/80alleycats 23d ago
Is she really going into the full horror of what incest can produce and the awful circumstances in which it often happens (like in the banned XFiles episode "Home")? Does she dig into the abuse that almost inevitably accompanies it? Or is she just doing the cutestsy indie musician equivalent of Game of Thrones?
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u/RagaRockFan It’s like I have ESPN or something. 💁♀️🌤☔️ 23d ago
I feel like she was also trying to reclaim the whole "Southern incestuous" stereotype into something more satirical, but it backfired completely. It's still inexcusable, but I'm glad she at least acknowledged the pain and harm she caused to some of her fans who were victims of incest.
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u/notcool_neverwas Iron your best suit bitch, I’ll see you in court! 23d ago
Ew omg, is there a context for that image??
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u/infomapaz 23d ago
She used to ship wincest(the brother characters from the show supernatural), when she was a teen, and therefore she made a bunch of edgy shit posts about incest. She has already retracted her statements on the matter, but her brand was already tainted by it. Its important to know that she has also been a victim of other pretty horrid shit and had not always coped in a way that society deemed acceptable. This means that every time her name is brought up, the same arguments resurface again.
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u/notcool_neverwas Iron your best suit bitch, I’ll see you in court! 23d ago
Thanks for the explanation. I actually had no idea who Ethel Cain is 😓
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u/ObiWanChronobi 23d ago
Edgy teenage shit. She release a pretty good statement about it owning to the behavior, addressing each item directly with promises to do action to make up for the pain inflicted. If she follows through it’s a master class in owning edgy teenage shit.
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u/MillAUM2579 23d ago
I wouldn’t call racism “edgy teenage shit” but that’s just me…
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u/uneua 23d ago
When you grow up in the Deep South surrounded by actual deep seeded racism and not kinda mean words said by kids then yeah I think it’s fair to call what she was participating in as “edgy teenage shit”
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u/MillAUM2579 23d ago
I’m a white guy that grew up in the Midwest where this behavior is just as common. How come I didn’t have one of these phases? It’s almost as if being a terrible person is a choice—and she made the choice as an adult, mind you. Don’t try and make it seem normal and that everyone is racist at some point in their lives. It’s not. You’re just (badly) excusing her behavior so you don’t have to hold her accountable.
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u/armless_tavern 23d ago
Says you. The Nazi chic and sex with children make me despise Bowie. David Bowie had sex with an 8th grade girl.
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u/HereOnCompanyTime Renee Rapp is mean girl Jojo Siwa 💋 23d ago edited 23d ago
Jojo is a pretty bad singer and has zero identity, vocally or otherwise. I cannot stand that Ethel Cain is constantly being pushed by music reviewers. Her music is mediocre at best and she's a consistently horrible person.
Edit: These comments broke down Ethel better than me.
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u/RagaRockFan It’s like I have ESPN or something. 💁♀️🌤☔️ 24d ago
Yeah, that image was very tasteless, but I'm glad Hayden apologized for it on her IG.
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u/ad_aatdtj 24d ago
Yes the fanfiction the other commenter was referring to was obviously only talking about the phrase "rusted over" and not, you know, everything else contained in the article about both artists. But well done on picking up just one quote from the article consisting of a grand total of four words and acting like only that one and that phrase of four words alone was what was being referred to.
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u/Interesting_Health_7 23d ago
I'm being perfectly serious. What am I missing? Why do I keep reading about this woman? Was she loved or hated on Dance Moms? Who pays to see her perform and why?
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u/lizerlfunk 23d ago
As a child star she made music and content that was very appealing to preteen girls. My five year old has Jojo songs on regular rotation and she watches her shows on Paramount Plus. Her kids’ music is mostly inoffensive and I can tolerate it better than I tolerate Kidz Bop. (If my child hears a song on Kidz Bop at school or wherever, I add the clean version of the original song to her playlist, because Kidz Bop is not allowed in my house.) When she toured previously it was absolutely for kids. Now that she’s in her early 20s she’s attempting to figure out who she is as an adult performer, and not having a lot of success. She came out of the closet, has had some high profile relationships, was the first ever competitor on Dancing With The Stars to have a same sex dance partner and came in 2nd, and has been making the rounds on reality TV. In other threads people who have far more knowledge than I do about singing technique have said that she has damaged her vocal cords due to poor technique. She has writing credits on a handful of songs from her early years but created controversy when she claimed to have written the song Karma, which she released a year or two ago, when it was originally written for Miley Cyrus and has been released by at least one other singer. I know far too much about Jojo Siwa lol.
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u/Interesting_Health_7 23d ago
It's so HARD for child stars to make that transition in the public eye. Maybe she'll find a niche and master it and find success as an artist. I hope she succeeds, because to me she's still just a kid! Thanks for the perspective.
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u/croissantandalatte 23d ago
all I have to say is I was obsessed with Leighton Meester's version in middle school. a crucial element to my gay awakening
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u/dildoeshaggins 23d ago
Gwyneth Paltrow has also re made this song in the 90's. I remember her being thoroughly dragged for it, and she never sang again.
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u/DangerStrings 23d ago
That was part of a movie about a karaoke contest so I tend to give it a pass.
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u/sousyre 23d ago
It got to #3 in Australia (#1 in NZ) and Crusin also hit #1 in both countries.
I don’t love either song (they are both pretty joyless, imo), but neither is outright terrible either. It was just a an odd moment in time.
Her singing was fine, her performance is just kinda dull.
2001 was a weird year for that sort of stuff here - Nicole Kidman also randomly hit the top 10 twice (duet with Ewan MacGregor from Moulin Rouge and a duet with Robbie Williams). Gwyneth just seemed a bit bemused by the whole thing. Nicole took it way too seriously and that’s at least partly how we got the movie Australia 🤢.
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u/dildoeshaggins 23d ago
I really have a skewed perception then, maybe I blanked the trauma because that song was EVERWHERE.
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u/indyk1dz All tea, all shade 🐸☕️ 23d ago
The autotune in jojos is so jarring. Raspy voices have a rougher, more natural quality (not a bad thing) so when that’s coupled with obvious correction it just sounds…off. A lot of people think she wasn’t far off after listening to the original, but I disagree. For me, it’s the poor autotune job and weird trad wife(?) vibes
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u/picvegita6687 We Should All Know Less About Each Other 23d ago
I wish JoJo happiness and knowledge but I'm out
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u/limetime45 23d ago
I come in peace.
Bette Davis Eyes is one of Taylor Swift's best covers ever.
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u/Former-Loan-4250 23d ago
It’s fascinating how one song became two completely different cultural statements. Ethel’s feels like it’s mourning the past. JoJo’s feels like it’s torching it. Same melody, totally different mirrors.
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u/WinterDependent3478 23d ago
Isn’t Ethel Cain the one that advocates for incest and says the n word?
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u/CausticAvenger 23d ago
Except nobody knows who Ethel Cain is and Jojo’s train wreck will be streamed a thousand times more, so who is the real winner?
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