Songoftheday 6/9/13 - I come home in the morning light my mother says when you gonna live your life right, oh mother dear we're not the fortunate ones ...

Cyndi Lauper - "Girls Just Want To Have Fun"
from the album She's So Unusual (1984)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #2 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 14

Today's Song of the Day was our introduction to pop's off-kilter princess Cyndi Lauper, a New Yorker who started out in a pop-punk band called the Blue Angels before venturing out solo in 1982. Getting signed by Portrait/Epic by manager/sometimes boyfriend David Wolff, She recorded her first album with members of the Philly pop band The Hooters backing her up, and that group's producer Rick Chertoff handling those duties here as well.

Her first single was a remake of another local Philly hero, new-wave rocker Robert Hazard, who recorded "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" in the late 70s with a totally different (and ominous) vibe to it...

Lauper tweaked the lyrics to be female-friendly, while the Hooters and Chertoff added a synth-heavy sheen to the record that transformed this somewhat misogynist lite-punk track to a bona fide women's empowerment anthem....

I'm telling you, the first 30 seconds of this maybe IMHO the most joyous MTV moment of the 80s.

"Girls..." went to #2 on the American and British pop charts, while topping the US dance chart, as it also did the pop charts in Canada and Australia. It also went to #16 on the rock chart as well as 5 weeks on the R&B chart peaking at #80. And with one classic song (one that's still timeless today), Cyndi became a household name. Considering her emergence the same time as Madonna, she represented an "anti-Madonna" of sorts, as Madge's fans strived to look just like the singer, Cyndi promoted individuality, which carries through today with her embrace in alliance with the GLBT community.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)


Ten years later, Cyndi re-released the song remixed and reworked as a lite-reggae/pop track retitled "Hey Now (Girls Just Want To Have Fun)" that was featured in the To Wong Foo movie, and climbed back up the charts, peaking at #87 in the US and going top-10 in England, Japan, France, and New Zealand...

In 1984, parody king Weird Al Yankovic took on the song for "Girls Just Wanna Have Lunch" (this isn't Al in the video, though)...

Rapper Cam'ron had a top-40 hit in Britain in 2004 sampling the song on "Girls"...

Singer Greg Laswell did a daring retake of the song, putting his male voice along with a much more delicate instrumental backing slowed down to a crawl, and it's absolutely beautiful...

Of course, Glee co-opted Laswell's treatment without crediting him in season three and had a #59 hit on the Hot 100 with their cover...

And I need to include some live Cyndi...here she is from 1987 (it starts about 4 1/2 minutes in, but her enthusiasm is priceless in the banter)...

...and again from this year's Private Sessions on A&E....

Up tomorrow: A lunar crescent for the start of the work week.