Queens of the eighties
Like Madonna and Boy George, Cyndi Lauper in the early 1980s burst like a balloon onto the contemporary music scene, brandishing an other-worldly personality and wardrobe to match.
”I didn’t dress like that in the ’80s because I was a marketing genius,” Lauper said during a recent telephone interview. ”I just liked those clothes.”
This trio rode the reins of MTV when the network was a brand new form of communication, in the vein of a television, telephone or computer. MTV shocked, sizzled, dumbfounded and dared its viewers to join them for a new age of media where personalities could corral success with a flashy image and a clever video as much as they could with well crafted music.
If another trio, Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland of The Police, were the three musketeers of MTV, then Lauper and Madonna were the queens, wielding pop power, selling millions of records and pushing catchy eye-candy on young music lovers who were lucky enough to have missed out on disco.
But while Madonna sang smoothly and seductively about sex, Lauper seemed to go out of her way to highlight her thick Queens accent, using the voice of a toddler.
Both were outrageous enough to warrant a notice that didn’t even consider their music. But both transcended the video crutch that MTV offered, churning out solid hits built around good songwriting, electronic music that maintained soul and the constant wink of an eye that from Madonna was suggestive, but from Lauper seemed to be letting the listener in on some kind of a joke.
Lauper is currently touring in support of her latest album, ”At Last,” which features standards from decades past, including the title track and ”Makin’ Whoopee,” a duet with Tony Bennett. These two selections are absolutely spectacular, particularly Lauper’s vocals and the violin playing on ”At Last.”
But the rest of the album, including covers of ”Stay,” ”Unchained Melody,” ”Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” and ”You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me,” is more reminiscent of bad karaoke at a hotel bar than a trip down memory lane taken by a gigantic recording star who left a crushing footprint on a generation.
Source: Poughkeepsie Journal