Cyndi Lauper Recast
Even `Girls Just Want To Have Fun' gets a new spin on her latest album
December 15, 2005
By MATT EAGAN | Courant Staff Writer

Once upon a time, there was reason to believe that Cyndi Lauper - and not Madonna - was destined to become the female pop icon of the 1980s.

All one needed to do was watch Lauper stand in a garbage can suspended above the audience, belting out "Money Changes Everything" at the top of her considerable lungs to be convinced she was unusually talented.

But Madonna possessed a knack for exploiting her own sex appeal and an uncanny eye for reinvention - especially important in the video age - and built on the success of "Borderline," while Lauper slowly faded from popular attention.

These days, Lauper has retired the garbage can, and her chance at outselling Madonna is long gone. But her shot at the title - the still triumphant album "She's So Unusual" - won't leave her alone.

Lauper, who will play Fox Theater at Foxwoods Resort Casino Sunday, has recast her most famous songs on "The Body Acoustic," which features nine reworked songs and three new ones.

The new arrangements are the backbone of her tour. Everything from "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" to "Time After Time" gets a new spin. The songs are surprisingly durable, but the album, in part, feels like an attempt to escape the box Lauper has been squeezed into ever since she became part of our collective gray matter.

For some people, Lauper will always be walking around that tiny kitchen table, arguing with Lou Albano, the peculiar wrestling manager who mysteriously hid rubber bands in his beard.

The video for "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" cemented Lauper in the public mind, and the single climbed all the way to No. 2 in March 1984, with only Kenny Loggins' "Footloose" keeping it out of the top spot.

Loggins aside, the pop charts were at their most vital in 1984, with Prince, Tina Turner, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen and Van Halen all vying for room.

Amid such competition, Lauper produced five Top 5 singles, including "Time After Time," which went to No. 1 in June.

During those dizzy days, Lauper became the answer to a trivia question when her clanging jewelry delayed the recording of "We Are the World."

She would hit again on her next album with "True Colors" and "Change of Heart" and later with "I Drove All Night" (making her one of the few brave enough to attempt a Roy Orbison cover) but was never again in the stratosphere of "She's So Unusual."

But if Lauper did not become an iconic figure, from this distance it's at least possible to see things we did not see in 1984.

Madonna knew (some would say knows) how to make pop music appealing, but nothing she has done has ever matched "She's So Unusual," which blended smartly written songs (from Lauper as well as top-notch writing talents such as Prince and Jules Shear) with Lauper's considerable vocal talents.

In one way, her reinterpretation is merely a clever way to remarket the same old songs to the same older fans (whose musical ear has changed), but there is substance to the work Lauper has done.

The stripped-down version of "She Bop" leads one to wonder how she ever got the song played on the radio in the first place.

The ode to female masturbation ("No I won't worry and I won't fret/ And no law against it yet") places emphasis on the lyric instead of the giddy, driving synthesizer that propelled the song the first time around.

Same with "Money Changes Everything," perhaps the most cynical pop song ever, written by Tom Gray, but given its full nastiness because of Lauper's snarled vocal.

All these years later, the snarl is gone, the lyrics are clearer and a fiddle carries the melody, but it remains as pointed as anything Bob Dylan ever delivered.

The difference is that the cynicism no longer springs from shattered youthful dreams but from a lifetime of experience.

And then there is "Time After Time," the sturdiest song of Lauper's career, which has been covered by everyone from punk rockers gamface to Miles Davis and has become something of a standard.

This time Lauper teams with Sarah McLachlan, who glides on the melody - something her own songs too seldom have - and produces a beautiful sound, but nothing as hypnotic as the haunting feel of the original.

The extra gravel that 20-plus years have added to Lauper's voice give added weight to "All Through The Night," though Shaggy's presence is bizaare.

And finally, we are back, as we must be, to "Girls Just Want To Have Fun," which has been rearranged twice since Lauper's first version but is the one song she should leave alone.

Nothing can match the sonic impact of the original, with all those clicks and buzzes that made it explode out of the radio.

And Lauper can't reproduce the giddy way she trounced the inherent sexism contained in Robert Hazard's lyric, until, at the end, it became impossible to hear the lilting refrain "They just wanna, they just wanna ..." without knowing that what Lauper meant (but never sang) was "Girls just want to have fun, too."

Cyndi Lauper performs Sunday in the Fox Theater at Foxwoods Resort Casino. Information: www.Foxwoods.com.

She's So Unusual is a great album and I don't think Cyndi should have done new versions of the songs. They are great just the way they are.

I hate it when artists switch the tunes around, but she still puts on a great show. The Blue Angel album is my favorite Cyndi album. I recently got three music videos from that release.

She's So Unusual was one of the best albums of the 1980's, and True Colors and Sisters Of Avalon were really good as well, but IMO, the original versions suffice for me. I saw her on Ellen singing She Bop as an acoustic ballad and the song was awful in that direction.

L. E. D. Let the Eighties Die! ohno:

(The eighties were bad enough - a dumb President, pop tarts [not the kind you eat] - without having to relive them now!)

L. E. D. Let the Eighties Die! ohno:

(The eighties were bad enough - a dumb President, pop tarts [not the kind you eat] - without having to relive them now!)


I have to diagree with you on this, Steve. I think that Cyndi Lauper's She's So Unusual is a classic album and perhaps even a minor masterpiece and not the work of a pop tart. It certainly does not deserve to be forgotten.

I have to diagree with you on this, Steve. I think that Cyndi Lauper's She's So Unusual is a classic album and perhaps even a minor masterpiece and not the work of a pop tart. It certainly does not deserve to be forgotten.

I agree. I know Steve doesn't like Madonna, but what's wrong with Cyndi Lauper? most critics initially thought she was the more talented of the two and a lot of people thought she was a much better singer. I know a lot of people who pride themselves on Joni Mitchell and Tracy Chapman and can't stand the likes of Madonna and Janet Jackson, yet they like Cyndi and think she's a great female artist. Cyndi's had remixes of some of her songs, but I certainly wouldn't lump her as a "dance-pop princess" or whatever when you listen to everything she's done in the past 15 years, her previous album before this was a standards record that got a lot of critical acclaim, and she had several singer-songwriter albums in the 90's that didn't sell much, but won a lot of respect from people who just thought of her as that wacky chick from the 80's.

I agree. I know Steve doesn't like Madonna, but what's wrong with Cyndi Lauper? most critics initially thought she was the more talented of the two and a lot of people thought she was a much better singer. I know a lot of people who pride themselves on Joni Mitchell and Tracy Chapman and can't stand the likes of Madonna and Janet Jackson, yet they like Cyndi and think she's a great female artist. Cyndi's had remixes of some of her songs, but I certainly wouldn't lump her as a "dance-pop princess" or whatever when you listen to everything she's done in the past 15 years, her previous album before this was a standards record that got a lot of critical acclaim, and she had several singer-songwriter albums in the 90's that didn't sell much, but won a lot of respect from people who just thought of her as that wacky chick from the 80's.


Actually, I have nothing against Cyndi, I just can't stand reliving the eighties in any way, shape, or form. However, I'll gladly take ten Cyndis over another Reagan - which we already have. And like the original Reagan, his middle initial is W. :eek:

oh okay. I think that much like Annie Lennox has successfully distanced herself from the orange-haired andryogynous new wave goddess from the 80's, Cyndi's done the same thing with her 80's image. I still like the old songs and think SSU is her definitive album, but I do think she has done a fantastic job saying goodbye to the pop superstar and hello to a more serious artist. Part of the reason I don't like her doing acoustic versions of her oldies is because IMO, that's in the past, she's been doing a great job with albums like Sisters Of Avalon, Hat Full Of Stars and Shine, but they have had the misfortune of not making money for the record companies because she doesn't have a True Colors or Girls Just Wanna Have Fun style song that could be a huge hit on those albums (even though I personally thought "Shine" had the potential to be a big single, she just was on an indie label and by 2002, who really wanted anything to do with Cyndi Lauper in the present tense?). SSU was a fantastic 80's pop record, but I think it's success was so overwhelming that she will always be remembered for that record (and True Colors in a lesser extent) that once her moment was gone, people had lost interest.

She came to town a few years ago opening for Cher, and while I think Cher is a great entertainer... Cyndi's set really put Cher's to shame, and she won a lot of the audience over by emphasizing on her last two albums (at that point) with only a couple tracks from her two big 80's records. I'm glad that people are paying attention to Cyndi again, but wish it would be for her more recent material instead of a standards album and acoustic reworkings of songs she made famous twenty years ago, both albums of which Sony pretty much forced her to do.