Forty years on from We Are The World, ‘so unusual’ pop queen Cyndi Lauper still making a difference

The biggest names in pop music gathered at A&M Recording Studios in Hollywood on January 28, 1985, to record the vocals for blockbuster charity single, We Are the World. There was Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, who wrote the song together for USA for Africa, plus Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Tina Turner, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Ray Charles and Bob Dylan (as well as, oddly, comedian Dan Aykroyd and assorted Jacksons). Standing out among this pantheon of pop was Cyndi Lauper, thanks to her lurid yellow and orange hair, op shop clobber and enough costume jewellery to anchor a few dozen mafia informants to the bottom of the East River. Even in arguably the most star-studded constellation in pop music history, the vocal powerhouse from Queens, New York City, lived up to the title of her 1983 debut album: She’s So Unusual. Chatting from her Manhattan home on the eve of her Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Farewell Tour of Australia, coming to Perth on April 12, the 71-year-old recalls that she had painted her hair those bright colours for her performance at the American Music Awards in Los Angeles earlier that night. “The paint was flaking off, so it looked like I had orange and yellow dandruff,” Lauper explains in a broad Queens accent undiminished by five decades of international touring. She had arrived at the LA studio wearing a vintage waiter’s jacket but spotted Jackson wearing a similar outfit, so removed the item. Even with her punk cockatoo hairdo, she felt underdressed. “I just figured, put a lot of jewellery on,” Lauper laughs. “When in doubt, accessorise, but I didn’t realise it was going to make a lot of noise.” Late production genius Quincy Jones later described her jangling necklaces and bracelets as a “pain in the arse”, but being loud has always been second nature for Lauper. The Grammy, Emmy and Tony award-winner grew up in a boisterous Sicilian family in Brooklyn, watching game show Queen for a Day and catching performances of The Beatles and Patsy Cline on TV. After her parents divorced, her mother and abusive stepfather moved the clan into a cramped railroad-style apartment in the Ozone Park neighbourhood of Queens. Lauper learnt the acoustic guitar and began writing songs, taking inspiration from Judy Garland, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and, of course, the Fab Four. She left home at 17, going to live with her older sister Ellen, who was openly lesbian. “My sister was gay, my best friends were gay, so I figured I had to be gay,” she told The Times of London more than a decade ago. “I tried kissing girls, but it didn’t feel right for me, and I was forced to come out as heterosexual.” Lauper, who married actor David Thornton in 1991 (they have one son), has remained a staunch advocate for queer rights and a beacon for the LGBTQIA+ community. In 2008, she founded the True Colours Fund, now True Colours United, to help the disproportionate number of LGBT kids among the homeless youth population in the US. The nonprofit organisation’s name borrows the title of her 1986 hit True Colours. More recently, Lauper launched Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights, a fund to support the advancement of women’s rights and health that plays on her 1983 debut single Girls Just Want to Have Fun. The singer says that when producer Rick Chertoff suggested covering Philadelphia rocker Robert Hazard’s 1979 song on her debut album, he challenged to her to flip the male perspective of the original and transform Girls into a feminist anthem. “What he didn’t realise was that I had burnt my training bra at the first women’s demonstration (in New York City) in 1968,” says Lauper, who added that Perth fans can support the fund. “We sell these coloured wigs at the show and, it’s fun, I’m wearing coloured wigs too. It’s kind of nutty and fun,” she says. “One hundred per cent of proceeds of those wigs goes to the Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights fund, which we give to organisations around the globe that promote women’s health issues, including access to free and legal abortions. “We promote civil rights for women,” Lauper adds. “Being one, you know, why wouldn’t I?” At previous shows on the farewell tour, Lauper has performed her 1993 song Sally’s Pigeons, which draws on the story of her childhood friend who died as a result of a back-alley abortion. A new version of the song was released in 2022 in response to US Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe v. Wade. She’s So Unusual also featured her first No. 1 single Time After Time and She Bop, her controversial ode to female masturbation that landed on the Parents Music Resource Centre’s Filthy Fifteen list of profane or sexually explicit songs. She Bop was her third solo single and third consecutive hit — each of the trifecta accompanied by an eye-catching video. The album cover featured Annie Leibovitz’s iconic image of Lauper in costume jewellery, fishnet stockings and the recycled red prom dress she bought from Screaming Mimi’s, the vintage clothing store where she once worked. This was the ’80s, the era in which MTV produced the biggest stars, and Lauper understood the importance of image better than most. “You realised you were never going to just hear music again, you were also going to watch it,” she says. Lauper’s career-long combination of music and visuals continues on her farewell tour, which sees the singer and Cirque du Soleil creative director Brian Burke collaborate with several artists, including Brooklyn-based kinetic sculptor Daniel Wurtzel, AI media pioneer Refik Anadol and 96-year-old Japanese installation artist Yayoi Kusama, on stage design. Lauper describes herself as a performance artist, a term she also applies to one of her favourite current stars, Chappell Roan, the Missouri “femininomenon” behind hits Hot to Go, Pink Pony Club and Good Luck, Babe! “She uses colour and costumes, and that’s fantastic because I love that stuff,” Lauper says. “She’s a wonderful artist. “We are all influenced. We stand on the shoulders of the people that came before us, and then the people that come after us stand on our shoulders, and that’s OK.” And perhaps the emergence of artists such as Roan makes it easier for Lauper to pull the plug on touring, knowing a new generation of pop acts are showing their true colours. “I can sing the songs now,” she explains. “I don’t know what it’s going to be like in five years. I don’t know what I’m going to be like. “Everything changes, you know. I’ll be 72 in the (northern) summer. I’m good now. I’m strong and, you know, I love doing the shows.” Lauper, who will continue working on a Broadway adaptation of 1988 comedy film Working Girl after the tour, says she has plenty of “nutty and fun” memories of visiting Australia since 1986. “When you landed, they sprayed you with pesticides,” she laughs. “I was thinking ‘Oh my god, I’m gonna die now’.” She says she became a big fan of Crowded House, Midnight Oil and INXS. She fondly recalls watching Chrissy Amphlett in the video for Divinyls’ early-’80s classic Boys in Town. “I thought I was going to drop dead. There she was in the Catholic girls’ school uniform.” Artists such as Amphlett, Roan and members of the USA for Africa supergroup reinforce her faith in music as a force for good. “Rock and roll can change and save the world,” Lauper insists. “As a community, we can do things and bring people together. “To me, it’s important to do this show now and bring people together, to give them happiness and hope because you can’t give up. You have to celebrate humanity.” Cyndi Lauper plays at RAC Arena on April 12.

Forty years on from We Are The World, ‘so unusual’ pop queen Cyndi Lauper still making a difference

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