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Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular MusicA B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y ZLAUPER, Cyndi(b 26 June 1954, NYC) Pop singer, songwriter. Her distinctive 'Minnie Mouse' vocals irritated some, enchanted others; she was first heard in the group Blue Angel, who released a highly rated eponymous album '80, produced by Simon and Garfunkel veteran Roy Halee. The band split '82; she surfaced with She's So Unusual '83, a no. 4 LP with four top five singles: 'Time After Time' (no. 1), exuberant 'Girls Just Want To Have Fun' (also used as film title), hymnal 'All Through The Night', nagging 'She Bop' (controversial, dealing with masturbation). She sang the theme in the soundtrack of Steven Spielberg's Goonies '85, and sang on USA for Africa's 'We Are The World'; if she had worked harder she might have stolen some of Madonna's glory that year. Her scatty image was modified for True Colours '86 with a hit title track, guests including the Bangles and Billy Joel. A Night To Remember '89 was honest gutsy stuff from a modern working girl but tending to sameness in an album's worth; Hatful Of Stars '93 did not make the top 100 albums, followed by hits collection 12 Deadly Cyns '95 and new album Sisters Of Avalon '97, in which her greatest strength was the ballads. She wasn't so scatty after all: she seemed to come and go but always popped back up. She wrote the music and lyrics for the show Kinky Boots (book by Harvey Firestein); the show won six Tony Awards in 2013, including Best Musical Show. Her tour that year was called the She's So Unusual 30th Anniversary Tour. Her biggest album in 1983 had seemed mainstream at the time, but also with an edge to it; Chrissie Dickinson of Tribune Newspapers asked her 30 years later if she saw it as as speaking to outsiders: 'Absolutely. It made the outsider feel more normal than the conservative people who always make fun of people who are different.' In 2016 she took a country turn on a new album, Detour, though it could be said that her work had always reflected the values of country music. The new album was co-produced by herself and Tony Brown, and members of the fraternity who thought enough of her to guest on it included Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, Willie Nelson (on his own 'Night Life'), and Vince Gill (on the comedy of Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty's 'You're The Reason Our Kids Are Ugly'). |