Mickey – The Best of Toni Basil

So much industry chatter has centred lately on the seemingly endless expansion of powerhouse songwriting teams on modern pop songs.

With APT, the ineluctable K-pop smash by Rosé and Bruno Mars, we might just have hit peak collab. What, you might reasonably ask, can ELEVEN people possibly have contributed to a song that’s less than three minutes in length?

More pressingly, how did septuagenarian songwriters Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn, hitherto known for hits by 1970s glam rockers The Sweet and Mud, come to be credited on a 2024 earworm about a South Korean drinking game? The short answer is Mickey by Toni Basil.

Antonia Basilotta, trading as Toni Basil, was 39 years old when Mickey, her first and last hit record, was released in 1981. By then an acclaimed choreographer, director and actor, Basil drew on her own experience in high school cheerleading as the inspiration for Mickey’s iconic, made-for-MTV music video – before MTV even existed.

All she needed was a song. The Chinn and Chapman-penned Kitty, in which randy British incel-rockers Racey moan about being given the runaround by “girls like you Kitty”, was a rare chart miss for the writing duo. But gender-switched by Basil – and with the addition of that iconic chant “Oh, Mickey you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind, hey Mickey!” – it flew.

Her timing was impeccable. Initially released in the UK and rising to no. 2 in the chart, it was picked up a year later by American label Chrysalis just as MTV’s appetite for after-school eye-candy was becoming insatiable. Mickey’s pout-and-pom-pom energy was perfect fodder for the nascent music video channel, who rotated it relentlessly and sent it to no. 1 in the US and Canada.

Basil’s where-are-they-now file is bulging; film and TV, Emmy and Grammy noms, plus music video credits for Tina Turner, David Bowie and Mick Jagger. Her proud ownership of one-hit wonder status shows she knows she’s anything but!