There's something deliciously perfect about Cyndi's journey from serving pancakes to collecting Grammys. I guess she really did just want to have fun...
The music industry loves its patterns – another blonde, another ballad, another carefully constructed image. Then Cyndi walks in with that magnificent Queens accent and hair that looks like it was colored with whatever she found in her mother's medicine cabinet. Perfection.
And what a voice. Four octaves of pure possibility wrapped in thrift store chic. "Time After Time" isn't just a love song – it's proof that vulnerability can be more powerful than polish. Though I suspect the suits at Epic Records needed a few stiff drinks before embracing that particular truth.
The numbers tell their own story: four top-five hits from a debut album. But it's what those songs represent that matters. Take "Girls Just Want to Have Fun." Originally written by a man about what he thought women wanted. Cyndi took one look at those lyrics and decided we could do better. Now that's what I call editing.
Her Grammy win feels less like a coronation and more like the industry finally catching up to what some of us have known since "She's So Unusual" first landed. Sometimes the most sophisticated move is simply being yourself – even if yourself happens to be a day-glo revelation from Queens.
MTV can't get enough of her, naturally. That Best Female Video award was inevitable – who else is bringing that level of creative chaos to our screens? Every video feels like a perfectly orchestrated accident, which, when you think about it, is rather like Cyndi herself.
Word is she's already working on the next album. The cynics (not me, darling, the other kind) wonder if she can match the success of her debut. They're missing the point entirely. Cyndi's not trying to match anything – she's too busy creating something entirely new.
What fascinates me most is how she's managed to make authenticity fashionable again. The punks love her because she's real, the pop crowd because she's entertaining, and everyone in between because she makes not fitting in look like the most natural thing in the world.
In an industry obsessed with formulas, Cyndi Lauper is gloriously unusual. And in 1985, that's exactly what we need.
-AK