Cyndi Lauper: Detour

Cyndi-Laupers-Detour-Album

Videos by American Songwriter

Cyndi Lauper
Detour
(Sire)
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Ms. Kinky Boots takes her Betty Boop vocal affectations and Noo Youwk accent to Nashville, hires some ringers in Emmylou Harris, Vince Gill, Jewel, Willie Nelson, and Alison Krauss — all of whom should know better — and lets fly on a dozen country classics from the ’30s, ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. With veteran producer Tony Brown behind the board, this is guaranteed to avoid being an embarrassment but really, what is the point?

Lauper, coming off a surprisingly successful foray, errr detour, into blues, seems to have her heart in this and the playing by Nashville pros is never less than on-point. Perhaps the concept is to expose these dozen standards to a new audience through Lauper’s higher profile stardom. Still, nothing here hasn’t been done many times before, and much better, by either the original artists (do we need a shockingly feeble-voiced Willie Nelson dueting with Lauper on his “Night Life”?) or others closer to the country aesthetic. Does Lauper think her by-the-numbers version of the chestnut “Heartache By The Numbers,” a tune already done by legends like Ray Price, George Jones, Kitty Wells, Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam to name a few, is going to become the new standard? On the plus side, her team dug deep to unearth Marty Robbins’ 1963 hit “Begging for You” and Lauper has some fun with the swing of Patsy Montana’s 1935 vintage “I Want to be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart,” even if you feel she doesn’t connect with those lyrics other than as wry comedy. 

The singer is never less than committed with a few tracks like the noir-ish version of “Misty Blue” nicely combining her diva propensities with a more refined approach. And it’s tough to ruin pop country landmarks like “End of the World,” even if Lauper can’t come close to the sympathetic naive power of Skeeter Davis’ original. But revisiting two Patsy Cline gems “I Fall to Pieces” and “Walking After Midnight” adds nothing except to realize just how poorly they fit with Lauper’s high pitched vocals, even as she tries to duplicate the natural catch in Cline’s voice.   

Sure, we know that girls just want to have fun. But perhaps Lauper should have taken the album’s title to heart and circumvented this ill-fitting and entirely unnecessary career side trip.

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