Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

"Girls Just Want to Have Fun" was the first major single released by singer Cyndi Lauper as a solo artist. It gained renown as a feminist anthem, an award winning video and a worldwide smash hit. With the inclusion of promotional releases, the single has seen about 40 individual versions of release. The most common is a 7" vinyl single (with varying cover artwork) released in 1983/1984 (depending on the country) and the second most common is a 12" vinyl single (also with varying cover artwork) released in 1983/1984. The song was written by Robert Hazard, who recorded it in 1979. He wrote it from a male point of view. For Lauper's version, she changed the lyrics slightly to allow it to be performed by a female and Hazard approved the minor changes. Her version appeared on her 1983 debut solo record, She's So Unusual. It is a synthesizer-backed anthem about the roles of women in society and is considered by many to be a feminist classic of the era. Gillian G. Gaar, author of She's a Rebel: The History of Women in Rock & Roll (2002), described the single and corresponding video as a "strong feminist statement", an "anthem of female solidarity" and a "playful romp celebrating female camaraderie."[1] It has been covered on either an album or in live concert by over 30 other artists including Miley Cyrus, Pearl Jam, Greg Laswell, John Mayer, Hoobastank, "Weird Al" Yankovic (as "Girls Just Want to Have Lunch"), Alvin and the Chipmunks, Cybill Shepherd, Lolly, Emilie Autumn, Triple Image, Dandy Warhols, Norman Palm, David Rawlings, The Ordinary Boys, Cam'ron, and The Killers. Recently, the Mexican band Los Horoscopos de Durango released a Duranguense version of the song and a Spanish version, Sólo Quiero Bailar (I Just Want To Dance). A version was also recorded by The Cheetah Girls, but the single was cancelled and the track cut from their forthcoming album. The variety of releases of the single includes an Austrian birthday card with a 3" CD of the song inside. The song has been heavily distributed in karaoke version as well. Lauper would later go on to completely re-work the song in 1994 resulting in the new hit "Hey Now (Girls Just Want to Have Fun)". The song was remade by Lauper yet again in 2005 on her The Body Acoustic album, also produced by Chertoff and Wittman with Lauper, with guest support vocals from Japanese pop/rock duo Puffy AmiYumi. The release of the single was accompanied by a quirky music video shot in the summer of 1983 and produced by Mother Studio in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It cost less than $35,000, largely due to a volunteer cast and the free loan of the most sophisticated video equipment available at the time. The cast included wrestler "Captain" Lou Albano in the role of Lauper's father while her real mother, Catrine, played herself. Lauper's attorney, Elliot Hoffman, appeared as her uptight dancing partner. Also in the cast were Lauper's manager, David Wolf, her brother, Butch Lauper, and a bevy of secretaries borrowed from Portrait/CBS, Lauper's record label. Lorne Michaels (Broadway Video, SNL), another of Hoffman's clients, agreed to give Lauper free run of his brand new million dollar digital editing equipment, with which she and her producer created several first-time-ever computer generated images of Lauper dancing with her buttoned-up lawyer, leading the entire cast in a snake-dance through New York streets and crashing a giant party. [info courtesy: wikipedia.org]

Author: Maximum80s
Keywords: [info courtesy: wikipedia.org]
Added: December 27, 2008