I liked Cyndi Lauper when we were both pushing thirty, and I like her 25 years later:
__
She is still doing “All Through the Night” in concert, although not quite in the same style:
Fair warning: Unless you have made peace with your memories of the 80s, do not YouTube the search string ‘pipers pit cyndi lauper’.
eemom
sheesh. MUST you use words like thirty and 25??
I have fond memories of that song. From a thousand years ago.
2th&nayle
I can’t recommend gooogling “True Colors” either.
Something Fabulous
Wow! I vaguely remember a Time or Newsweek piece at the time, comparing Cyndi and Madonna, and which one would become more popular and stay relevant and so on. I think they picked Cyndi. Odd to see them both now; and how Cyndi seems to have vanished for such a while. Thanks for finding this!
Cyndi looks so great! Is there such a category as “Age appropriate female rocker”? Love this whole thing: the duet, the– is that a harpsichord?– the dancing, the leather pants! And still her essential goofy/gawky self.
2th&nayle
Gawddamnit! That song makes my heart want to sing!
bago
Some of us were in the single digits in the 80’s. I think there were a few months at the end where I cracked into the double digits.
freelancer
Reading the dated references in posts and comments makes me feel so damned young. And I’m not that young. I’m 27, but I feel 45. To each his own, I suppose.
BTW, the project wonderful homoerotic butterfly icarus gorging on nectar sidebar ad is like 10 times as weird as 3 armed Pam Anderson.
Anne Laurie
@Something Fabulous:
It’s a zither, on a stand. (I actually got to see Cyndi as the opener for Cher’s “Last Stand” tour, a decade or so ago.)
MarkusB
Wow, this is awesome. Thank you. I’m about ten or twelve years behind you ladies, but I remember Cyndi, too. This was always my very favorite song by her, and it hasn’t gone anywhere but up this morning.
Mark S.
Tobey Maguire is considering playing Bobby Fischer in a movie about the chess champion. I wonder if the film will stop in 1972, or will it go on and cover the shit times.
M. Bouffant
“Piper’s Pit.” I’m Googling now. Heh.
Comrade Kevin
You know what’s awesome? How some diarist on the GOS can essentially claim that slave labor in Dubai is all Tiger Woods’ fault.
freelancer
@Comrade Kevin:
frakkin’ libtards.
Might as well blame him for the corporate globalization that leads to slave labor in Indonesia and the Pacific that Nike uses to make ginormous profits, and Woods is their spokesman.
Actually, that makes more sense than what the GOS diarist is bitching about.
former_friend
I’ve loved Cyndi since she first walked out barefoot onto the Johnny Carson Show stage … she’s an amazing talent and such a warm heart. You just knew this one had a lot to give us, and she has.
Ballsy too: Cyndi had one of the first AIDS-benefit songs in the 80’s (Boy Blue). Wrote a song about masturbation (She Bop) that got nicely censored by the fundies way back when. Refused to be stereotyped with the bubble-gum rock image.
She paid for it. Her career suffered from her outspokenness and confident independence as a woman … there is this ugly mindset called “conservatism” some people have heard of. Things are better now for women in music, I gather, except now they are routinely termed “hoes” so maybe it’s not better after all.
I recently saw Cyndi teaming up with Lady Gaga for an AIDS prevention campaign. It really was something very cool, to see the torch being passed: Cyndi was being very kind and sagelike and Lady Gaga was visibly in awe of one of her idols. I would have figured modern Americans would have preferred a smackdown fight between old and young, but no. Their interaction was very positive and sweet and did credit to both.
Always loved Cyndi. Class, talent, and a good heart. One of the greats. Thanks for putting this up.
Jill
That Madonna became a superstar and Cyndi Lauper didn’t was the first real indication in the 1980’s of our devolution into a country that would re-elect George W. Bush.
Lisa K.
Cyndi Lauper was one of my favorite singers back then. Great voice and style.
Too bad she has degenerated to a reality show flunkie now…
HeartlandLiberal
Lauper appeared in a role as a tarot card reader helping Bones and Booth solve the murder of her sister on the TV series “Bones”. Very entertaining appearance.
I still like her music.
Incertus (Brian)
@Jill: Well, Lauper was a superstar by any reasonable definition. She just didn’t stay one for as long as Madonna did. Madonna showed a remarkable ability to play to the crowd–to get them outraged when that would sell (Like a Prayer) or get them on her side when that would (Papa Don’t Preach)–and she kept the critics happy by calling it “reinventing herself.”
Lauper, for better or worse, didn’t try to do that, and it hurt her career no question, but she was still a superstar. My students know who she is, and talk about her with the same sort of awe that I talked about Pink Floyd with when I was their age.
harlana peppper
just never was into her music all that much, as a personality, she was interesting
“I don’t want to spoil the party, so I go-o-o”
harlana peppper
funny thing is, i hated Madonna when she first came out, now I look back on the “underwear as outerwear” days with fondness (guess that’s what happens when you get OLD) because at least she had a sense of fun back then
now, she just sucks
harlana peppper
today’s update on anti-Obama bumberstickerz:
“Don’t blame me, I didn’t vote for the Socialist”
“Obamacare, change you can die for”
Svensker
I always thought it strange that Johnny Carson loved Cyndi and her music so much. He would get the funniest look on his face when she was singing, you could tell he was really moved. Odd.
But then I loved Cyndi, too.
valdivia
I am a Lauper fan and as a Gleek (a devotee of the singing show Glee) I can tell you that her music (the song True Colors) was used in one episode. so even if she is not a superstar anymore, her music still has relevance.
Keith G
Nice post and thread. Anne, it would be really cool (for me anyway) to have some reflective and more culture, less political thoughts up earlier and more often – as well as have these late night/early morning jewels.
The news and political wars are wearing me down.
The thing for me about Cyndi is that she was a singer/song writer/artist at a time when many who ‘made it big’ were simply performers.
The Other Steve
I’m more of a 90’s music person myself. I went to high school and college in the 80’s but I consider that the lost years.
Give me Tori Amos, Shawn Colin, PJ Harvey, Ani Difranco, etc.
I think at Tori was more derivative of Kate Bush then Cyndi.
But i did always like girls having fun. :-)
Wag
Cyndi was always more of a chick pop rocker but I loved her from the beginning and love her still. If you’ve never heard it you have to check out her first album with the band Blue Angel, released in ’81. They were a Long Island retro-Rockabilly outfit in the same vein as the Stray Cats with Cyndi on lead vocals. It’s finally available on iTunes in a digital format. I long ago wore out my vinyl copy
dr. bloor
I’ve always liked Lauper, and her talent was always pretty apparent. At the same time, had you told me in ’83 that we’d be listening to her anywhere but Gus’s Last Chance Saloon in 2010, I’d have laughed out loud and offered you another line. Good for her.
Patrick
I recently re-watched the original “We Are the World” video (1985) for the first time in a long time, and was reminded that the very best thing about it is Cindy Lauper. Everybody else in that room is visibly solemn and self-conscious about being surrounded by other superstars, but Cindy is just being Cindy, and her soaring “Yeah, yeah, yeah, YEAH!” before the chorus suddenly breathes life and joy into the whole recording. Kim Carnes, standing next to her, looks at her like she’s just crashed the party. Which of course she had.
Nethead Jay
That second video is great. I really liked her back then too, but she actually seems stronger, better now 25 years later. Way to go, Cyndi! Thanks, Anne Laurie, for posting this
@former_friend: Yes, she was punished by that part of the cultural divide that tries to keep down strong, independent women, which is one reason I’m glad to see her doing well. You’re right that things are a bit better nowadays, at least in some respects. Still a ways to go, though.
burnspbesq
If it weren’t for Cyndi Lauper, we wouldn’t have the best work of the last ten years of Miles Davis’ life, his version of “Time After Time.”. Other than that, who cares?
The only female-vocalist album from the 80s that I still listen to is the one AL posted a clip from a couple of nights ago – “Famous Blue Raincoat,” Jennifer Warnes’ all-Leonard Cohen record. And I still love the two Linda Ronstadt – Aaron Neville duets.
burnspbesq
If you want to see the definition of “aging gracefully,” find a recent photo of Emmylou Harris. And she continues to make compelling music, 36 years after “Boulder to Birmingham” made me fall in love with her.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
I’ve always thought Time After Time was one of the prettiest songs around. Everything But the Girl has a cover on their Acoustic album that is very well done.
eemom
@burnspbesq:
Agreed. I wasn’t into her earlier music but I really like Wrecking Ball and Red Dirt Girl.
burnspbesq
Linda and Aaron, “Don’t Know Much”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQwV3_r96BM
That, ladies and gentlemen, is how to take a disposable pop song and turn it into something very special.
The Moar You Know
@Comrade Kevin: I’m proud to say that I’m the individual that Godwinned that thread.
It needed to be done.
burnspbesq
@eemom:
Have you checked out Allison Moorer? Her early stuff – up to about “The Hardest Part” – was pretty conventional Nashville country-pop (albeit much-better-than-average conventional Nashville country-pop). Since then, she’s become much more interesting.
former_friend
@Patrick: I went and watched the video, first time in years. Thanks for pointing it out … lots of talent there, but Cyndi was still, ah, Unusual and did give it that extra “fun” spark.
Steeplejack
@burnspbesq:
Her new album, Crows, looks pretty good. I haven’t had a chance to hear all of it yet. I like “Goodbye to the Ground.”
Chris Johnson
Yeah, I just went to watch it too :)
Naive song, but such vocal arrangements and performances- and there are some interesting details from Dave Marsh’s second Springsteen book, too.
Cyndi messed up a first take, not by singing wrong- her jewelry was clinking! She cooperatively removed it and they went on. Maybe that’s why the other singer looked at her funny when Cyndi was still balls-to-the-wall :)
Also- note the pairing of Springsteen and Stevie Wonder. Seemingly very different- but the only ones (if I remember correctly?) who were leftwing political activists. At least, Springsteen was vocally supporting unions and local food banks at his concerts, directly as a response to the right wing trying to co-op him. “Born in the USA” was a sort of protest song, but first person and not seeing its own context. Reagan was all too happy to provide a different one…
Oh, and Bruce sounds that way because he was coming off a grueling series of live dates and his voice was utterly wrecked. He showed up anyway, just walked in off the street with no limo or entourage. Kinda cool :)
patrick II
There are some performances that just stick out for some of us. I can still remember clearly Cyndi doing “Time after Time” on the night show. It was just a beautiful song beautifully done and has never left my memory.
asiangrrlMN
Holy shit. I love Shaggy (rapper in the second video), and I love Cyndi. What a great pairing! That’s a great rendition of this song. Thanks, Anne Laurie. She was a breath of fresh air for me back in the day (and I’m thirty eight now). I remember when she did her version of Prince’s When You Were Mine, and she kept the original gender references the same (“I know you were going with another guy”). That was so cool to me.
@former_friend: Agreed. She paid for it by being herself and not allowing others to shove her into a pre-defined pigeon-hole. Yes, she was a star, but she never reached the commercial success of, say, Madonna.
Brett
Man, I remember when Lauper appeared on the Super Mario Bros cartoon.
GlenInBrooklyn
Thanks for the links. Heading off into another bad week at work. And I really needed some fun.
JL
Cyndi rocked then and still does today. I continue to admire her (maybe a little worship leftover from childhood even).
I hope she doesn’t come off terribly on that idiotic “Celebrity Apprentice.” I don’t want embarrassing clips of her on “The Soup” to tarnish my image of her.