There’s a whole host of ‘I didn’t know it was a cover version’ 1980s hits but ‘Bette Davis Eyes’ may be the weirdest of all.

LA-born Kim Carnes took it to #1 in the Billboard Hot 100 45 years ago this month and created one of the decade’s most memorable singles.

But it started life as a ramshackle slice of swinging country-tinged R’n’B performed by singer/songwriter Jackie DeShannon on her 1974 album New Arrangement.

Co-written by DeShannon and Donna Weiss, it concerned Hollywood femme fatale Bette Davis, who was nicknamed ‘The Eyes’ at the height of her fame in the late 1930s.

The song features some novel, enigmatic lyrics like ‘All the boys think she’s a spy’, ‘She’ll turn the music on you’ and ‘She’ll unease you’ (is there such an verb?) which seem totally out of sync with DeShannon’s artless vocals and the barrelhouse piano.

But when Carnes and her producer Val Garay proposed a cover of it in late 1980 for the singer’s sixth studio album Mistaken Identity, they came up with something truly special. It was recorded at Garay’s Record One Studios in LA. He had previously worked with James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt and Bonnie Raitt.

Apparently a ‘straight’ cover version was considered, but quickly jettisoned. Instead Garay, Carnes and synth player Bill Cuomo – playing the fairly new Prophet-5 – came up with a complex, new-wave-tinged arrangement mostly centred around B-flat, D-minor and C, with unexpected drops to F.

Carnes claims the band played it completely live in the studio, and got it on the second take. There’s notable guitar from session legend Waddy Wachtel and Craig Krampf deserves plaudits for his tasty drumming. But it’s Carnes’ vocals that steal the show, truly ‘playing the part’.

Released in March ’81, the song spent nine weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 starting on 16 May 1981, and also reached #10 in the UK (her only UK top 40 hit to date).

It was the lead-off track from Mistaken Identity which also went to #1 for four weeks – remarkably it was only the second album of Carnes’ to chart after nearly ten years as a solo artist. That’s called building a career.

Bette Davis herself apparently loved the song, sending Carnes, DeShannon and Weiss a letter thanking them for making her cool in her grandson’s eyes.

‘Bette Davis Eyes’ won Song of the Year and Record of the Year at the 1982 Grammys. Carnes was still basking in its glory when she sang on ‘We Are The World’ in 1985.

Oh, and DeShannon possibly paid the ultimate compliment by doing her own take on the Carnes version (in a different key) in 2011…