Cyndi Lauper’s inspiring new Alison Elwood-directed Paramount+ documentary, Let the Canary Sing, is full of surprises and revelations — and one of them is the fun fact that her signature song, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” was actually a cover of a 1979 hyper-masculine punk bop by Philly new waver Robert Hazard.
When Rick Chertoff, the producer of Lauper’s debut album She’s So Unusual, took the promising new Portrait Records signing to see Hazard play a Philadelphia club, Lauper was totally turned off by Hazard’s peformance of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” (note his title’s more casual spelling), which he sang from the point of view of a girl-crazy, slightly slut-shaming bad boy. Right then and there, Lauper told Chertoff that she would never record the song, as Chertoff had proposed.
It was only after Chertoff and Lauper’s other She’s So Unusual collaborators, Rob Hyman and Eric Bazilian of the Hooters, were, as Lauper words it, “all game and kind enough to let me have my head and my ideas,” that the slightly retitled “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” became a feminist anthem.
“The other version didn’t work, but this one did. I took out the part where the girl snuck into his bedroom and he was having fun and Dad said, ‘What’s up?’ And I figured, make an anthem,” the lifelong activist says. “What they didn’t understand was who the hell they gave that [song] to — because I burned my training bra at the first women’s demonstration when I was alive, at the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park. So, there you have it. It’s not going to go the way you think.”
Lauper eventually “understood how I could sing from my point of view and make it a call to solidarity for women. The parts that were very masculine and didn’t pertain to what I wanted to say, I cut out.” She not only switched up Hazard’s misogynist lyrics (with his blessing), but also suggested the bright, summery, joyful arrangement, which included Coney Island-inspired carnival organs and modern hip-hop snare beats.
“My idea was to use those Hooters guys and their reggae feel, and this wonderful new sound of this electronic drum, and use the wonderful new styles that came over from England from groups like the Clash and how they approached their guitars,” Lauper explains. “It was kind of raw. And also [the influence of] Andy Summers [of the Police], who I felt played in a completely different way than what we were listening to, way more blues-oriented. I just felt there was a way to incorporate everything — and use a big voice, which I had.”
Lauper was already 30 years old when she landed her record deal with Portrait, and she “had worked really hard to get there. It wasn’t an overnight thing. I had done thousands of gigs, was in a few bands, had a record deal prior with [retro pop/rock band] Blue Angel.” So, this seasoned artist had zero problem when it came speaking her mind. She recalls being in the studio at New York City’s Record Plant with Hyman and Bazilian and telling them: “This is going to sound crazy, but Rob, you could play this like a reggae song, only do these chords? And Eric, can you play a Motown riff, only do these chords? And I’m going to sing something. And just ignore me, because I’m going to sing something weird.”
Lauper says her “weird,” or unusual, vocal delivery was inspired by a ’50s/’60s R&B duo that she’d been turned onto by John Turi, her former bandmate in Blue Angel. “Shirley & Lee had a song called ‘Feel So Fine,’ and [Shirley] had a really high voice. And I figured, ‘OK, try it like that.’ I started just to sing ‘girls‘ really high. And they were playing this riff and there was the wind drum. And then, all of a sudden, I heard it. They heard it. We all heard it at the same time — what could be.”
Lauper’s instincts were correct, and her radical remake of “Girls” connected with fans, many of them female and/or queer, who felt emboldened by its message. “I didn’t know it would be so well-received, of course, but I really wanted every woman to hear that song and think about their power. That’s also why it was very important that I had women of all colors in that [music] video, so that every little girl, wherever she was from, could see herself in that video,” Lauper explains.
“In the 1980s, women were still struggling to be seen as equal to men,” the pop icon continues. “When the women’s movement really started earlier in the ’60s and ’70s, I felt so empowered and it was thrilling to me. But in 1980s, it seemed that a lot of the hard work by people like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem was being forgotten, and women were once again accepting the status quo. We had gotten far — but not far enough — so I sang ‘Girls’ for all the women around the world to remember our power.”
More than 40 years later, the Best New Artist Grammy-winner, Tony-winner, and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nominee, who will embark on her farewell tour this year, “never gets tired of singing that song live.” But, bittersweetly, “Girls” resonates perhaps even more deeply today. After Lauper noticed protesters carrying “Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights” signs at the Women’s March in 2017, she co-designed two T-shirts with that slogan to raise money for True Colors United (her organization that aids homeless LGBTQ+ youth), Planned Parenthood, and later the Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights Fund, which Lauper launched in 2022 in response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
“I never thought I would see the day that a fundamental civil right for half of the population would be taken away in this country. We must push back, which is why I am launching the Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights Fund at the Tides Foundation,” Lauper posted on her website in 2022 (when she also re-released another one of her perennial feminist anthems, “Sally’s Pigeons,” a 1993 ballad about abortion rights). “I believe in the United States and I believe that we will not only regain the right to choose, but one day actually secure full equality.”
