With her countless rainbow bracelets, fishnet stockings and popping make-up, Cyndi Lauper gave a lot of color to the beginning music channel MTV in the early eighties. She also put herself on the map with her cheerful debut single Girls Just Want To Have Fun (1983). After years of struggling in the margins and a failed career with the band Blue Angel, the American seemed to be unable to make a
… mistake for a while. Of the ten songs on her debut album She's So Unusual, four made it to the top five in the United States, a record for a female artist at the time. Outside of America, the New Yorker also scored high with She's So Unusual. The album consisted of a contemporary mix of new wave and synthpop and at the same time clearly winked at the women's pop of a few decades earlier. The thirties mixed the style of The Ronettes, Yoko Ono and Elvis Costello into their own whole. Although Lauper enjoyed considerable success as a singer, actress and human rights activist in the years that followed, She's So Unusual remained her best-known work. (JE)more
