Superlatives
A Vulture series in which artists judge the best and worst of their own careers.
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Across four decades,Cyndi Lauperhas excelled at dancing a different path than most of her peers.
It wasnt a fake thing, she recalls.
Thats all I wanted to do.
I wanted to contribute.
Ive come a long way on the stage, she says.
When I was younger, I had agarbage binfor performances.
Singers are important in the world.
I fucking sing because the world needs it.
Most enduring lesson
I began in a cover band called Doc West.
We had a manager who used to tell me, You have to do Janis Joplin stuff.
He would alsotell me to take all my makeup off because Joplin didnt wear makeup.
As a young woman, I was embarrassed to stand onstage with no makeup.
So by the time I got through with the cover bands, I had learned how to perform.
My first gig was in front of what seemed like 10,000 people at the Boardy Barn in the Hamptons.
The big complaint was that I moved like a boy.
What the hell was wrong with me?
Why couldnt I be still and sing?
I tried really hard.
I once found myself with one leg on the floor and one leg on the stage.
I kept thinking,Yeah, why should I drink this?
So you’re free to kill me too?
So by the timeI met John Turi, I was really excited to learn.
I was imitating people but didnt sound like them.
I wanted to become a better singer and understand phrasing.
I didnt like the sound of my voice, so I went to jazz school for a while.
Of course, they threw me out because they wanted me to choose between jazz and my rock band.
So I quit school.
But I did learn a lot.
I learned to stand in the center of the rhythm.
I listened to Billie Holiday I sang with her breath for breath, note for note.
It enabled me to understand not being fearful of the snare.
Then all of a sudden you hear a story that you could tell.
I want to be the conduit.
Album that scared people the most
Shes So Unusualshocked and scared everybody.
I said, Can you paint me?
We started painting my face.
It was like war paint.
Thats how we did the makeup.
It was something I developed for love of color and love of vintage.
Then I wanted to do wilder things, and people would say, Oh, thats just strange.
That just made me want to do it more.Lets go after it.
Biggest transitional moment
I had a hard time when I was famous afterShes So Unusualcame out.
I used to walk, listen, sit, write, and walk some more.
But once I became famous and tried walking alone, people would follow me.
Luckily, they just wanted autographs, but this punch in of thing scared the hell out of me.
I found myself taking off all the things that I collected and loved and hiding them.
He went onSaturday Night Live,and everything he did people would do back to him.
Thats how I felt.
And I said, Oh, hell no.
I dont sing like that and Im not doing that.
What was special about Im Gonna Be Strong was the intimacy.
Once you start piling all the crap on, theres no intimacy anymore.
Its just a lot of crap.
If you put a lot of shit on top of that, you would never feel that.
Thats why I fought.
And my God, our songs were catchy.
Putting on little catchy hooks made them better.
They sounded like summer and happy things.
Then everybody started to open up in Blue Angel and we became a really wonderful little band together.
Every time they went hard rock again, I would pull them out of that and fight.
They didnt understand what I was fighting about.
But I wanted it to be modern.
I wanted to make new music because everything that was coming over from England was fantastic.
I would rather have aligned myself with that sound because it was inspiring to me.
They didnt think it was going to be commercial.
Blah, blah, blah.
But I still wanted to write.
The main thing I had to fight about was writing the last song, Time After Time.
When I started writingwith Rob Hyman,it felt different.
We were able to write Time After Time pretty quickly.
I was on the phone with him writing the words and there still wasnt a chorus.
There was nobody there, but it calmed me down.
A little spooky, right?
So I left it in and I had a conversation with Rob and everything he was going through.
I wrote down every single thing he said and the things that I saw.
One thing wasRick Chertoffstanding in the studio and going, My watch is doing crazy things and going backwards.
Look, the second hands unwinding here.
I thought,What a great line.
I wrote it down for Time After Time and he had no idea.
You dont have to jump in the baddest shit and fight them all the time.
Theres just always a way to get around gatekeepers.
Youve got to find allies who are like singers.
Then you might do what it is you want to do.
I told her, Look, Ma, we can make a difference if youre in it.
But to not understand the history of your mom and your grandmother is huge.
If you dont know where you came from, you make similar mistakes over and over.
The grandmothers had all sorts of rhinestones on and the daughters spray-painted the side of their heads.
And their children, well, they were scary versions of me.
For the first time, I felt like I did something good.
I brought three generations of women together.
For me, that meant everything in the world.
Most courageous song
I took the brunt of it with True Colors at first.
I talked about AIDS, which wasnt very popular to openly discuss.
I knew True Colors was a healing song.
I didnt fully realize how it was embraced by the LGBTQ community.
Then they heard the song and decided they could live.
Thats how that journey started withTrue Colors United.
I think Ive been fortunate enough to contribute what I can to the world.
You get to talk to the directors and theyre usually very quirky.
Ive been known to scare a few people at that sort of thing.
I thinkKinky Boots,as a musical,might become a movie.
Im now working onWorking Girl.
Ive been focused on this for so long its the musical adaptation of the film.
But Im focused on whats going on in the world and what young women should be hearing.
You heard these girls running their mouths at the time,Im not really a feminist.Im like,Really?
Did you go to college?
Do you belong to a health club?
Are you able to walk into a bar and buy a drink?
Do you have a credit card?All of that shit is what feminism is.
When you dont vote, youre hurting yourself.
Each little girl was able to see herself because we were integrated and we were a quilt.
We were like New York.
This city has everybody.
Its a miracle for me that I was born here.
