The singer Cyndi Lauper was too nervous to perform with: “Trying so hard”
The over-the-top Brooklyn accent; the stacks on stacks of beads; the red and yellow poofs of hair like a cartoon chicken spooked by a fox: there was nothing about prime 1980s Cyndi Lauper that felt derivative or familiar.
In fact, it could be argued that she represented the most authentic realisation of the ‘80s self-expression explosion, happily dancing through the decade and adding a bit of joy wherever she went, whether it was Wrestlemania, The Goonies soundtrack, or her criminally forgotten starring role alongside Jeff Goldblum in the 1988 movie Vibes—a romantic comedy about two mind-readers who go to Ecuador to find the source of all psychic energy. Man, the ‘80s really were glorious sometimes.
Of course, Cyndi Lauper didn’t just contribute to some of the wonderful weirdness of that decade; she was also inspired by it. A year before the release of her debut album, 1983’s She’s So Unusual, Lauper was absorbing all the amazing new sounds and styles accompanying the arrival of Music Television (MTV) and the age of the music video.
“I gotta say, when I was watching MTV and I saw the Eurythmics—in ’82 actually—it stopped me dead in my tracks,” Lauper told Pitchfork in 2022. “Specifically, that close-up of Annie Lennox looking in the camera, and the colour of her hair. Annie’s voice and her image—it became a whole different ball game for me. And then I got to know her and I just thought, ‘Wow, she’s such a great artist’.”
Lennox and Lauper are arguably the two most iconic female faces and voices of mid-80s MTV, but it’s not often that one thinks about them existing in the same space. Lennox’s striking androgynous style, paired with commanding, soulful vocals, was wholly original in its own undeniable way, but she was far too serious a character to warrant many comparisons to the manic flapper energy of Cyndi Lauper. One was cool, calm, and calculating in their videos; the other was a whirlwind of childlike giddiness and vulnerability.
Nonetheless, Annie had managed to influence and intimidate young Cyndi in a way few other artists had. Perhaps more importantly, the precedent Lennox helped set for women in the mainstream pop music space is that you could be stylish, cerebral, strange, and still have hits, which made it easier for a singer like Lauper to be taken seriously on her own terms.
Eventually, the two women met. And even with her own stardom firmly established, Lauper couldn’t help but find the encounter a tad overwhelming.
“I was kind of isolated from everybody in the industry, but I knew Annie because in ’85 she came to my loft in New York,” Lauper recalled. “I had a piano downstairs, and I was trying to record her. I was so nervous, I dropped the microphone into the piano while she was playing. She just looked at me and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry!’ I was trying so hard, it was kind of funny.”
The moment feels like vintage Lauper in all the ways her fans love her: self-deprecating, sincere, relatable, but still routinely finding herself in the coolest places with the coolest people.
