Three decades after the release of her debut album She’s So Unusual , Cyndi reflects on the album that made her an icon.
Photo by Annie Leibovitz/ Courtesy of Sony Legacy
She's So Unusual was a fitting title for Cyndi Lauper's breakthrough debut album; when she first burst onto the scene in 1983 with her eccentric thrift-store outfits, big bright orange hair, and exuberant personality, there was nobody like her. Fusing new wave, rockabilly, pop, and rock, the album spawned four top-five singles, including empowerment anthem "Girls Just Want To Have Fun," masturbation ode "She Bop," and the haunting "Time After Time." Three decades after the album's release, you still hear them in everything from film and television, to weddings and school dances. BuzzFeed talked with Lauper about the 30th anniversary of She's So Unusual, her memories of making the album, and what her relationship to her most iconic songs is like today.
How do you remember the recording of the She's So Unusual?
Cyndi Lauper: We had so much fun in the studio, and I think that comes across in the recording. It was a wonderful collaboration with an amazing bunch of people who I still have in my life today. We just brought the best out of each other. It was a great creative time for all of us.
I've heard that you didn't love Robert Hazard's original version of "Girls," and that you rearranged some of the lyrics to make it work for you.
CL: I had a different take. Obviously, he's a guy, he's not going to write what a woman's going to sing about. I was concerned about how it would be taken, and he said, "Well, think about what it could mean." So the parts that were very masculine and didn't pertain to what I wanted to say, I cut out. In the 1980s women were still struggling to be seen as equal to men. When the women's movement really started, in the '60s and '70s, I felt so empowered and it was thrilling to me. But in the 1980s it seemed that a lot of the hard work by people like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem was being forgotten and women were once again accepting the status quo. We had gotten far — but not far enough — so I sang "Girls" for all the women around the world to remember our power.
Thirty years later, are you surprised that the media still pits female musicians against each other?
CL: Not really. It's still disappointing. They don't do that with guys, EVER. And I don't know most of these women, but if it's like the "competition" Madonna and I supposedly had, these are most likely fiction.
Before the success of She's So Unusual, you were a singer-songwriter as part of Blue Angel. During those earlier years, did you ever second-guess your career choice?
CL: No, I never second-guessed. I was told a few times to quit or be someone I wasn't, but I always believed in myself and my music and just found a way around my detractors.
Do you remember hearing"Girls Just Want to Have Fun" on the radio for the first time?
CL: It took a while. We didn't have a lot of support at radio out of the box. One programmer even said my voice was too high for radio, that I sounded like a Chipmunk and I would never have a hit. I went to wrestling [matches] and did a lot of promo with them, MTV came in, and then radio came in. The first time I heard it was on a radio station in Boston.