Mickey

This was originally recorded as "Kitty" by a group called Racey, which released it in 1979. In the original lyric, Kitty is a girl. Toni Basil changed the title from "Kitty" to "Mickey" and the gender from female to male. Basil choreographed the 1968 Monkees movie Head, but insists the song is not named after group member Micky Dolenz. She also says there's nothing dirty about the song - it's just a chipper tune about a girl who really digs a guy. If you do decide to watch Head, keep an eye out for Basil in a surreal sequence where she and Davy Jones dance alternately in a white and a black room wearing a combination of white and black.

This was written by the songwriting team of Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn, who wrote several other pop hits, including "Love Is A Battlefield" and "Ballroom Blitz."

Basil got the idea for the video before she found the song to accompany it. The video was produced, directed, and choreographed by Basil - she was the first to do this for her own video. She had made some short films in the past, and had a deal with a European company to make a collection of videos. For one of the videos, she decided to do something with a cheerleader concept, since she had been head cheerleader at Las Vegas High School (now known as Las Vegas Academy - that's why the sweater she wears in the video says, "LVHS"). She made the clip before MTV went on the air, so the video was first established in the UK, where various TV shows played it and sent the song up the charts; it peaked at #2 in the UK in February 1982. In America, it took a while before MTV got the video and started playing it, but when they did, the song took off, reaching #1 for a week in December 1982.