Chase Maverix - Bette Davis Eyes

Flipping “Bette Davis Eyes” into a big-room dance track is a gamble, and I’m still not sure it pays off. Chase Maverix takes the Kim Carnes classic — one of the most distinctive vocal hooks of the early ’80s — and wraps it in exactly the kind of festival-ready production Spinnin’ ships by the pallet. The good news: that hook is bulletproof, and hearing it over a modern kick does land a cheap little jolt of recognition. The bad news: the drop underneath it is generic to the point of anonymity, a supersaw stab you’ve heard on fifty other tracks with the serial numbers barely filed off. The transition into the drop is the tell — the vocal gets chopped and pitched up right at the moment it should be soaring, so the one genuinely great element on offer gets sacrificed to fit the template. It’s the sound of a great song being used as bait for a middling production. It’ll work at a festival because the crowd already knows the words, not because anyone brought a new idea. I wanted to like it more than I did.

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