Cyndi Lauper on saying goodbye in style during her farewell tour

Cyndi Lauper says goodbye to life as a touring musician. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Farewell Tour heads to downtown Phoenix for the Footprint Center concert on Tuesday, November 19th, one of 23 stops the tour will make en route to its final show in Chicago on December 5th.

And that’s great.

“It’s not that I don’t like performing,” Lauper says. “I just don’t like collecting things. I don’t like spanking.

Lauper has assembled a dream team to help bring her farewell tour idea to life.

“It’s a bucket list tour,” she says. “I have an incredible artistic director, Brian Burke, who is helping me achieve what I have only dreamed of. Visually it’s beautiful. We are collaborating with Yayoi Kusama and her beautiful work, as well as Daniel Wurtzel and his live art.”

For those who may not be familiar with Kusama’s work, the artist’s infinity room of mirrors.”You who are destroyed by the dancing swarm of fireflies“” is perhaps the Phoenix Art Museum’s favorite installation.

Cyndi Lauper’s farewell tour was inspired by the documentary Let the Canaries Sing.

The timing of the Girls Just Wanna Have Fun tour was inspired in part by Alison Ellwood’s Let the Canaries Sing, a documentary about Lauper’s career that premiered on Paramount+ on June 4.

“The documentary was already out,” Lauper says. “And I thought I might as well just do a farewell tour and say goodbye in a big way, you know?”

For the past eight years, Lauper has worked with Hooters’ Rob Hyman, her collaborator on her first of two Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 songs, “Time After Time,” on the score for the musical version of “Working.” Girl,” a 1988 film starring Melanie Griffith and Sigourney Weaver.

“Working Girl will open at La Jolla (California Playhouse) in the fall of ’25 and open on Broadway in the spring of ’26,” Lauper says.

“So I worked on this for about eight years. It’s a long time. And I think if I had waited until “Working Girl” came out, it would have been too late for me because I’m strong now. I can do this. You want to do something while you can.”

While this tour will mean the end of all that chatter, Lauper says he has no plans to retire from music.

“You know, I can still perform,” she says. “But I’ve been writing the material for ‘Working Girl’ for so long that it doesn’t mean I don’t make music, because I do.”

She approached Hyman because Working Girl was set in the ’80s.

And, as Lauper says: “I thought, well, you and I were in the ’80s. Let’s do this.” I also work with Sammy James Jr. from Mooney Suzuki. And I asked Salt from Salt-N-Pepa to write a rap for one of the songs because it was the ’80s.”

How Cyndi Lauper got to Broadway with Kinky Boots

Working Girl is Lauper’s second musical.

She wrote the music and lyrics for the song “Kinky Boots”, winning the 2013 Tony Award for Best Original Score. The musical won five more Tony Awards, including Best New Musical. In 2014, Lauper won a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album for his cast recording. And in 2016, the West End production in London won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical.

Previously, she was approached with an offer to work on a musical.

“James Lapine called in ’93 and asked me to do something,” Lauper says. “But at that time it was my album “Hat Full of Stars”, which was very important to me, and I had been waiting for it for several years. So I had to refuse.”

The star was finishing a European tour of Bring Ya to the Brink when Harvey Fierstein, who wrote the book Kinky Boots, contacted her to see if she would be interested in working with him on a musical.

“When Harvey called me, I had just finished the Bring Ya to the Brink tour and I was like, OK, sure,” she says.

“Because it was a lot of effort and self-expression, and because I made this dance album, they said, ‘Well, you’re not rock ‘n’ roll.’ And I was like, “Are you (expletive) kidding me?” You’ve got to be kidding me. I’m just tired of gatekeepers. And I like to tell stories, and I think those stories are important to tell.”

Cyndi Lauper saw “Kinky Boots” as an extension of her activism.

Lauper also saw the musical’s theme of overcoming prejudice as an extension of the work she has done through True Colors United, a nonprofit she founded in 2008 that focuses on the experiences of LGBT youth, who make up 40% of homeless youth in the United States. United States.

In 2022, Lauper performed “True Colors,” her second Hot 100 hit, as President Joe Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law. That same year, Lauper founded the Girls Just Want Fundamental Rights Foundation.

Lauper announced the initiative on October 11, 2022, International Day of the Girl, in response to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.

She remembers seeing young women holding signs that read “Girls Just Want Fundamental Rights” at marches in 2016.

“So I thought to myself and said, ‘Oh my God, we have to help. That’s where you can step up,” she recalls. “So I came over. And we raised money for women’s health, for safe and legal abortion, for women to have autonomy over themselves, because as a woman, I don’t like being a second-class citizen, and I don’t like being biased towards The Handmaid’s Tale, because that this is exactly what is happening.”

That’s why your voice is so important, Lauper says.

“We live in a country where we can vote. Some countries are not allowed. And I believe that you women pay equal taxes without equal rights. This is wrong,” she says.

How Cyndi Lauper Claimed “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” for Women

The name of Lauper’s farewell tour is taken from the title of her breakthrough single, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” a song she was reluctant to record after hearing the demo of the guy who wrote it, Robert Hazard.

As written, Hazard’s song was in no danger of being considered a feminist anthem. Until Lauper flipped the script.

“Well, it was written from a man’s point of view, and I didn’t understand how it related to me,” she says.

“And then they said, ‘Well, it could be a women’s anthem.’ You could make him do it. So I pulled out what was very specifically his story. Because what made it more meaningful was the girl’s story, you know? And the rest is her history.”

Apart from the loss of the bridge, the changes are largely a matter of perspective. In Hazard’s version, he stays out all night, angry at his mom, because “these girls just want to have fun.”

In Lauper’s version, she asks her parents to relax and let her live the life she wants because when the workday is over, girls just want to have fun.

And change the following line: “Some boys take a pretty girl and hide her from the rest of the world” from Hazard’s line “All my girls should walk in the sun” (as if he’s pleased with how generous he is to allow such things) Lauper’s line “I want to be to those who will walk under the sun” changes the entire tone of this verse.

When She’s So Unusual Made Cyndi Lauper a Star

“Girls Just Want to Have Fun” was the first of five Top 40 singles from She’s So Unusual, the debut album that established Lauper as a cultural phenomenon, followed by “Time After Time,” “She Bop,” “All Through” Night” and “Money changes everything.”

“It was interesting because when I was in college and falling in love with vintage clothing and wanting to be an artist, I came back to Queens and people were throwing rocks at me for the way I dressed.” she says. “And then when I became famous, people started dressing like me.”

She laughs and then adds, “My clothes and everything weren’t made up. It was something I liked and came up with something that I thought was unique. I didn’t think other people would start dressing like me.”

She recalls an angry confrontation with a woman at a pharmacy in New York’s Sutton Place neighborhood.

“This woman looked me up and down and asked, “What are you wearing?” says Lauper.

“And I was so angry. I said, “This?” Oh, this is what your daughter will wear next year.” And I just left and went to the car. But I had no idea. Then my mom called me on Halloween. I forgot where I was, in Australia or somewhere else. And she told me that every child who rang her bell was dressed like me.”

It’s been 41 years since She’s So Different made her a star and introduced her to kids’ entertainment, and Lauper is thrilled to say goodbye to those fans with a tour dedicated to the entertainment girls want.

“This tour is meant to be fun, to bring people together and have fun and have a good time,” Lauper says.

“I actually have wigs in different colors and I’m trying to make them very inexpensive so we can have a party. Can you imagine how fun this will be? We will all have colored hair.

“It will be funny for people. It will be touching. I think people will leave very happy. This is my “thank you” to everyone for all the ups and downs I went through and for everyone who followed me.”

Cyndi Lauper Farewell Tour Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

When: 20:00 Tuesday, November 19.

Where: Trail Center, 201 E. Jefferson St., Phoenix.

Tolerance: $34.50 and up.

Details: 602-379-7800, Ticketmaster.com.

Ed has been covering pop music for The Republic since 2007, covering festivals and concerts, interviewing legends, covering the local scene and more. He did the same in Pittsburgh for over a decade. Follow him on X and Instagram @edmasley and on Facebook as Ed Masley. Email him at [email protected].