Cyndi Lauper - She's So Unusual

Why not keep the fun going? You know who made her major label debut 2 years before Whitney? Cyndi Lauper. But She's So Unusual isn't actually the start of her story.

Cyndi Lauper was the singer of a band called Blue Angel. They were a NYC club band, but only one of their two albums actually got published. Their A&R guys boss's boss's boss over in Germany got fired, and the new guy just dropped the whole roster. Blue Angel kept on playing clubs but fired their manager after a Studio 54 gig. He sued them for $80k and that bankrupted her, so she just worked at a retro clothing store and kept on singing whatever she felt like at all the clubs she already made a name in, and a new manager finally scooped her up. Being the savvy New Yorker with two functional middle fingers that she is, she made sure that she was an equally credited arranger of every song, got her own songwriting credits, and didn't actually pay for any of it herself.

You can call it new wave, or synthpop, or whatever, as long as we all understand that this is the same universe as Boomtown Rats, Blondie, The Cars, Devo, a direct descendent of the preppy, nerdy, strange side of punk. Cyndi Lauper was a punk. Captain Lou Albano was her best friend, he starred in all her videos and she'd be ringside at his wrestling matches. Blue Angel was generally regarded as neo-rockabilly but that's just a nit-picky portion of the punk/new-wave spice melange (Dune reference, drink 'em up). Actually, i legitimately don't hear a difference between this and early Prince or B52s or any of the weirdest stuff from the late 70s to mid 80s. It's good time 80s dance music, and synths were the thing at the time.

What else? Oh yeah, that's an Annie Leibovitz portrait taken in Coney Island, and Cyndi's own dress.

Now for how i really feel. It's freakin' awesome. You know the hits, but the deep cuts are spectacular. Kiss You, with it's bizarro spastic take on Love Potion #9, Prince's When You Were Mine (an insanely weird song in its own right), and the gender switched title track which is actually a duet between regular Cyndi Lauper and her 1920s gangster moll impression.

I don't want to ruin all the surprises if you've never really, i mean REALLY listened to the whole album, but something is genuinely off-kilter about every track, in a way that you can hear isn't like anything else. Critics are quick to point out that nothing after this quite achieves the same level of spectacular in her career, but i think that's missing the point ('cause if you haven't noticed, she just kept on doing whatever she wanted to do). Whitney Houston or Madonna is the wrong comparison. This is a Red Headed Stranger type album. This is an i know what i'm doing and i'll let you make a lot of money too if you shut up and move the faders like a good boy album. Who gives a crap if i sell another record after how big this one is gonna be? Right place, right time, right personality, the industry followed her lead not the other way around.

And for all you fine people who haven't had the pleasure of hearing Blue Angel, here's their New Wave take on 50s rock and roll (every bit as good a Billy Joel's similar throwback endeavors):

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mg6wynck-g07HnIH549frg3laX-1_fIKM

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