Cyndi Lauper Reacts to “Loony” Backlash Over Her 1984 Hit

Cyndi Lauper still doesn’t understand the backlash one of her songs received. In a recent interview with The Independent, the pop star recalled the moment “She Bop,” her popular 1984 track, got added to the “Filthy 15.”

Videos by American Songwriter

The list, which was made by conservative group Parents Music Resource Center, featured fifteen songs they considered to be sexually explicit and inappropriate for children.

“It really shocked me,” Lauper said of the backlash to the track. “I wrote it with this guy, Steve Lund, who called me up one day and he said, ‘You’ve gotta write a song about female masturbation,’ and I was like, ‘Whoa, OK!’”

The pair did just that, though Lauper worked to ensure the song’s true meaning “wasn’t obvious.”

“[I hoped] the grown-ups would know what it was about and have a chuckle, but then the kids would just think it’s about dancing,” she said.

Lyrics featured in the track include, “They say I better stop or I’ll go blind / Oop, she bop, she bop.”

“I didn’t think it was so bad, or so nasty,” Lauper said. “But all of a sudden it got loony.”

Cyndi Lauper Opens Up About Her Career

Despite the unexpected public reaction to the song, Lauper didn’t regret penning or performing the track.

“Nobody was ever really talking about stuff like that,” she said. “I find it interesting to talk about things that people don’t want to talk about.”

That mindset made navigating the business side of the music business a challenge for Lauper, who’s currently gearing up for the European leg of her Girls Just Want to Have Fun Farewell Tour.

“I scared a lot of people, and the suits didn’t understand that I wanted to live an artist’s life,” she said. “I’d always have to go to these company things, and I couldn’t live in that hierarchy. It was a hard time. I was a radical and I wanted to live radically. I wanted to express my art and live it.”

After all, that’s how she’s always been.

“I burnt my training bra at the first women’s demonstration that I was alive for in 1968,” she said. “And I’ve been that way ever since.”

Photo by River Callaway/Variety via Getty Images