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Cyndi Lauper: Showing her true colors
Cyndi Lauper was a pop music dynamo and MTV-favorite singer who later won a Tony Award for her songs for the stage musical “Kinky Boots.” But she wanted more than to just have fun. The subject of a new documentary on Paramount+ called “Let the Canary Sing,” Lauper talks with correspondent Anthony Mason about how music made her tumultuous home life better; how she had to be convinced about her breakout record, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”; and about criticism from producer Quincy Jones that she was a “troublemaker.”
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Comments
(All comments are reviewed before being published, and I review submissions several times per day.)
Tommy Marx says:
One year, for my birthday, a friend bought me tickets to see Cher in concert in Greensboro, NC. I’ve never been a concert goer, and while I love Cher, I wasn’t that excited to see the show until I found out Cyndi Lauper was opening for her. I still have the “Shine” CD Cyndi sold during the tour, and I still remember – with embarrassment (I was pretty drunk by the time the concert started) and pride – screaming out from the nosebleed seats “I LOVE YOU CYNDI LAUPER!!!”. I was so loud, Cyndi actually said “I love you too!” from the stage to shut me up. God, I hope I shut up after that, LOL.
The thing is, I would love Cyndi for her talent, her songs, her spirit, but when you add in the ally and champion of LGTBQIA+ equality she’s been from the beginning, can anyone possibly wonder why I think of her as a goddess? I have ten of her albums on CD (at one point or another I had “She’s So Unusual” as an LP, a cassette, and CE, and I’m pretty sure I had “True Colors”, “A Night to Remember”, “Hat Full of Stars” and “Sisters of Avalon” on casette before buying CD versions of those albums too, LOL). I do not like cover albums – Annie Lennox’s “Medusa” being the notable exception – but I still listen to Cyndi’s “At Last” CD regularly.
I can understand Cyndi wanting to make a difference beyond just writing and performing hit singles, but let’s be honest – that’s exactly why she’s made such an incredible difference. And even songs that weren’t huge hits at the time, like “Boy Blue”, “Heading West”, “Sally’s Pigeons”, “Unhook the Stars”, and one of my all time favorites, “Same Ol’ Story”, are songs that will live on forever and continue to inspire people for generations to come.
Like I said, she’s a goddess.