Its video won MTV’s inaugural best female video award in 1984.
Courtesy Image
By the time Cyndi Lauper broke out with “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” she was more than ready to walk in the sun. Lauper had launched her singing career in the late 1970s as part of Blue Angel, but the group’s 1980 debut album flopped and legal issues with their manager led her to file for bankruptcy.
She took a variety of odd jobs, including waiting tables at IHOP, before landing a solo record deal and releasing She’s So Unusual in October 1983. “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” almost didn’t make the album: Lauper felt that the song, as written by Robert Hazard, emphasized women as sexual companions.
“It wasn’t right for me,” Lauper told THR earlier this year. “It was written by a guy, and he was writing, ‘Hey, we’re lucky. They want to have fun. Here I am.’ And it wasn’t that way for me because I’m a woman.”
She came around after pushing for a Motown sound and tweaking the lyrics, which helped rebrand it as a proclamation that women deserve to enjoy the same pleasures as men. As her first single, “Girls” entered the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 80 on Dec. 17. Its music video, featuring Lauper’s friend and pro wrestler Captain Lou Albano playing her dad, helped usher the song to No. 2 on its way to becoming a generation-defining hit.
Says Alison Ellwood, director of the recent Lauper documentary Let the Canary Sing: “Forty years later, ‘Girls’ remains a feminist anthem, empowering girls and women to use their voices to challenge attacks against their minds and bodily autonomy.”
This story first appeared in the Dec. 7 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.