The time has finally come to rediscover Cyndi Lauper
In the beginning was the inclusion of his “Time after time” in one of the most iconic scenes of the second season of “Stranger things“, that of the dance between Dustin and Nancy which closed the series: it was also thanks to the Duffer Brothers and their Generation Z phenomenon series that the hit contained in the 1983 album “She's so unusual” managed to surpass Spotify quote 780 million streams. Then, in 2022, reaching the quota made the news 1 billion views on YouTube by the video clip of another hit contained in that album, the one “Girls just want to have fun” became a real after MeToo
anthem for the new feminists. Last year, a documentary on her parable, from the beginning until today, was created to celebrate her Paramount+ just bought the rights: “Let the canary sing”, directed by the Australian Alison Ellwood and expected in the USA on the streaming platform on June 4th, has sealed an extraordinary career, from over 50 million copies sold worldwide, bringing its fundamental stages back to life on the screens of the most important film festivals at an international level. Her most recent tribute was reserved for her by her colleague Nicki Minaj: last week the femcee brought Cyndi Lauper on stage at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn during a stop on her “Pink Friday 2 World Tour”. Together they sang “Pink Friday Girls” live, a song that Nicki Minaj created by sampling the same song “Girls just want to have fun”: 20,000 of them let themselves go to the tune of the 1983 hit. This is how, piece by piece, Cyndi Lauper is slowly taking back everything that has been denied to her in the last thirty yearsbetween unexpected homages and claims.
In the mid-80s there was only one queen of pop. And she wasn't Madonna. The impact of Cyndi Lauper, who left Brooklyn to achieve success (“We were poor. You could find everything there. Starting with the Italians. We listened to Mario Lanza and Enrico Caruso”, her sister Ellen says in the documentary – after all she was of Italian origins , Sicilian to be precise, also mother Catrine), had had on the music biz between 1983 and 1984 is demonstrated by what Lionel Richie said about Madonna's exclusion from the USA for Africa all-star team which in In 1985 he found himself at A&M Studios in Hollywood to record “We are the world”.
The future Queen of Pop was not contacted, despite having just returned from the overwhelming success of “Like a virgin”, simply because.Cyndi Lauper was preferred to her, which was experiencing a golden moment at the time. Cynthia Ann Stephanie Lauper, this is the pop star's real name, had hit the US – and then world – charts two years before her, she ended up recording a pop album after having cut her teeth in the 70s in cover band of Jefferson Airplane, Led Zeppelin, Bad Companythen founding his own band, i Blue Angel. It didn't last long. Soon the group broke up and Cyndi had to start working as a sales assistant to support herself, while continuing to cultivate the dream of making a living from music.
It was in a New York club, in 1981, that Lauper met the person who would soon become her new manager, David Wolff: he managed to get her a contract with Portrait Records, a sublabel of Columbia Records. But to get to record her album that will change her life, the singer had to take her former producer to courtwho after her debut with the band Blue Angel didn't want Cyndi to pursue a solo career: “Let the canary sing.”the judge ruled, freeing the singer from those constraints. This explains the title of the documentary, which in Italy will arrive on Paramount+ the day after the release in the USA, on June 5th. It is precisely the documentary that tells the true story of that “
Girls just want to have fun” which in the fall of 1983 began to resonate literally everywhere. Lhe song had been recorded four years earlier, in 1979, by Robert Hazard, protagonist of the American new wave circuit of those years (he would soon found Robert Hazard and the Heroes, a band with which he would write some of the most interesting pages of rock on the Philadelphia circuit of the 80s – he passed away in 2008 at just 59 years old). But that was the fun the original version alluded to sexual. Not exactly the same interpretation that Cyndi gave to the song, transforming it into a feminist anthem of emancipation: “Girls just want to have fun”, she sang, with that shrill voice, as a child, jumping in the rough patches of Brooklyn alleys, surrounded by girls of every ethnicity. “I made sure that women of all walks of life and ages were included so that all girls could recognize themselves. I was tired of seeing videos with pre-established ideas: in those of r&b music there had to be only black people, in those of rock music there had to be only white people. And I wore a red dress, because it is the color of power”, says Cyndi Lauper in the documentary.
The parable ended quickly: just enough time to send hits like “Time after time” and “She bop” to the top of the charts. And then again, in 1985, “The goonies 'r' good enough” (iconic soundtrack of cult film “The Goonies”) and the following year “True colors”. Wrong songs, choices perhaps a little too courageous and daring: what happened next doesn't matter. “I didn't want to let anyone tell me what I should or shouldn't do”, she claims. What matters is that at 70 years old Cyndi Lauper is preparing to finally be rediscovered and “rehabilitated”. On June 26, the pop star will perform an exclusive show featuring her greatest hits at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Three days later, on June 29th, she will go on stage at the Glastonbury festival, one of the most anticipated events of the summer season: aThere will be 200 thousand spectators listening to it.
