Gender is a tricky topic and this is especially true in cover music. It's always a point of contention, the pronouns of the songs focus vs the implied gender of the singer. The person singing is probably going to want their hypothetical person that they are singing to, to match their own preferences in significant others, so if someone of a different gender or sexuality covers the song,they often change a few things. "he"s and "her"s are often flipped, along with "boy"s and "girl"s, and so on. But what about names? Most names have hard implications of gender to most people, so you'd have to find a different name of the other gender that completely rhymes, right?
Mickey, as performed by Toni Basil for her debut studio album "Word of Mouth" is an interesting example of this. Most of the songs on the album are covers, with three of the album's nine or ten songs being DEVO covers. "Mickey" is one of the few non DEVO covers on the album. The song which was Basil's biggest hit was written by Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn as "Kitty" for the band Racey.
Before we keep going I have two slight tangents to address. The first is by coincidence, Mike Chapman is also the name of one of the creators of Homestar Runner, and if I didn't mention this my head would have popped like a balloon. The second is that Chapman and Chinn also wrote the The Sweet song "The Ballroom Blitz", so that's pretty sick.
But the first time I heard the song was under a further context: It was familiar to me first from a "Totally Minnie" CD that was in my household when I was a toddler. And I distinctly remember equating the song "Mickey" with a later parody where Lou Bega re-recorded his hit "Mambo No. 5" to replace the names of women he wished to court with the names of Disney characters. This was until I also distinctly remember getting into an argument about the subject at my editor Mouse's 14th birthday party. Our friend Ariel got into an argument with me because I was so sure it was about Mickey Mouse and she was sure it was about one of The Monkees. We were both wrong but her misunderstanding was because of a rumor and mine was because I had a disney CD as a youngling.
Anyway it's not a very clean edit, as Kitty and Mickey are half rhymes. So let's take a written except of the lyrics for educational purposes
"…Oh Mickey, what a pity, you don't understand…"
"…Oh Mickey, you're so pretty, can't you understand…"
"Mickey" is not a clean rhyme with "pity" or "pretty" the same way "Kitty" is and once you notice it it sticks out.
Now for some information on Toni Basil herself. Basil is considered a one hit wonder musically, but only as a singer. Toni Basil is also a famed choreographer, alongside a particular directing role. This being the legendary music video for the "Once in a Lifetime" by Talking Heads, which she Co-Directed with the band's lead singer David Byrne.
And to begin to wrap things up, an additional bit on things changed for gender reasons, there is a line in "Hey Mickey" that wasn't changed to reflect gender and it sticks out a little.
"Anyway you want to do it, I'll take it like a man"
And to be fair it's barely anything, but with everything else that was changed in the song, it feels odd to leave in. This very cut and dry request of "action" outside of the singer's projected gender is often taken as innuendo more than anything else. Perhaps the slight misalignment of flow in the central rhyme is lowering my expectations for how long was really taken on the rewrite, but I'd otherwise wonder why out of all the gendered language it was left unchanged. But to be fair, the only masculine name I could find to fit the rhyme scheme and syllable count is "Smitty", and while a good name, might not have had the radio distance "Micky" did.
Or you could forgo people and genders and even the original lyrics altogether. Write a new song to make the Mickey rhyme work. That's what Run DMC did. They borrowed from the song, crossing it with original lyrics and additional sampling from "My Sharona" by The Knack, and It all became "Tricky". Like the topic of gender in cover music.