
Cyndi Lauper began her career as a playful rebel, and matured into
one of the best respected artists in American music. Lauper rose to
fame in 1983 with the release of She's So Unusual, an album that
provided an ideal showcase for her strong but girlish voice and her
thrift-shop-genius personality. The album made her an overnight
star and a darling of MTV, spawning two major hit singles ("Girls
Just Want to Have Fun" and "Time After Time") and briefly making
her a symbol of hip female empowerment on a par with Madonna. While
Lauper wasn't truly a new wave artist, her multicolored hair, her
eclectic fashion sense, and the implied inclusivity of her musical
philosophy -- embracing elements of pop, reggae, funk, and dance
music -- symbolized a free-thinking attitude that cleared a path
between the underground and the mainstream. Lauper would never have
another hit on the level of She's So Unusual, but with time her
music matured as her persona evolved from a wacky street kid to a
woman with ideas and the talent to make things of them. Her music
remained eclectic, but with 1989's A Night to Remember and 1992's A
Hat Full of Stars, she took greater control of her songwriting and
explored serious themes that would have been outside her image a
decade before. With 2003's At Last, Lauper showed she could tackle
old standards in grand style, and by the 2010s she was a diva who
could move from pop to blues (2010's Memphis Blues) and country
(2016's Detour) with ease, even writing the songs for a successful
stage musical. Born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in the
neighboring borough of Queens, Lauper (born June 22, 1953) dropped
out of high school in her late teens, choosing to sing in a number
of local cover bands instead. Eventually, her voice was so strained
she turned to voice lessons from Katherine Agresta, a well-known
vocal teacher in New York. In 1977, Lauper began writing her own
material with keyboardist John Turi. The duo formed a
rockabilly-influenced rock band, Blue Angel, that same year. Over
the next few years, the group built up a solid following in New
York, culminating in the release of an eponymous debut album on
Polydor in 1980. Blue Angel flopped, and shortly afterward Lauper
filed for bankruptcy, which led to her group's disbandment. Lauper
subsequently sang in local clubs and restaurants. In 1983, her
manager and boyfriend, David Wolff, managed to secure her a
contract with with the CBS-distributed Portrait label. At the end
of the year she released her debut album, She's So Unusual. Helped
by heavy MTV support of the album's first single/video, "Girls Just
Want to Have Fun," the album became a major hit in the spring of
1984, eventually climbing to number four on the U.S. charts; it
would wind up going platinum five times, as well as becoming a hit
in the U.K. and Europe. "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" peaked at
number two, while its follow-up, the ballad "Time After Time,"
reached number one; two other songs, "She Bop" and "All Through the
Night," went Top Ten. With mainstream success under her belt,
Lauper was an official star, yet she found maintaining her
popularity wasn't easy. During 1985 she worked on her follow-up
album; her only release of the year was "The Goonies 'R' Good
Enough," the theme song from the children's adventure film The
Goonies. Her second album, True Colors, appeared in the fall of
1986, and although it was successful -- the title track went to
number one, while the album peaked at number four and went platinum
-- its softer adult contemporary sound ran counter to the
expectations of some fans. Lauper's career continued to lose
momentum, as her feature film debut in 1988's comedy Vibes failed
to find an audience. A Night to Remember, her third album, was
released to weak reviews in 1989, and although it spawned the Top
Ten hit "I Drove All Night," it suffered from disappointing sales,
peaking at number 37. The next year, she severed her relationship
with Wolff and married actor David Thornton. After taking a few
years off, Lauper returned in 1993 with Hat Full of Stars, an album
where she co-produced and co-wrote all of the tracks. The record
stiffed, peaking at 112. The following year, the hits compilation
Twelve Deadly Cyns...and Then Some was released in the U.K.; the
album reached number two, while a remixed "Girls Just Want to Have
Fun" became a number one hit. Twelve Deadly Cyns was released in
America the following year to less attention. Lauper released
Sisters of Avalon, her first album of new material in four years,
in the spring of 1997 to generally positive reviews, yet the record
didn't chart. Merry Christmas...Have a Nice Life! followed in late
1998. After a long hiatus, Lauper returned to the studio in 2003
for At Last, a collection of pop standards that garnered favorable
reviews and spawned a live DVD, Live...At Last. The Body Acoustic,
a collection of stripped-down reinventions of previous hits,
followed in 2005. In 2008, Lauper released her tenth studio album,
the dance-oriented Bring Ya to the Brink. She then switched gears
for 2010's Memphis Blues, which featured her versions of several
classic blues songs. Lauper promoted the release of Memphis Blues
with a stint on the reality show The Celebrity Apprentice, and over
the next few years she specialized in multimedia projects. In 2012,
she released an autobiography titled Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir and
wrote the score and songs for the Broadway musical adaptation of
the 2006 film Kinky Boots. The production earned 13 Tony
nominations in 2013 and Lauper took home the trophy for Best
Original Score, becoming the first woman to win this category
alone. She celebrated the 30th anniversary of She's So Unusual with
a tour in 2013 -- the album also saw a deluxe reissue that year --
and she continued to make appearances on TV. In the spring of 2016
she returned with Detour, a collection of country music covers
featuring cameos from Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, and Alison
Krauss. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine & Mark Deming