One thing that has been noticeable about Cyndi Lauper ever since the beginning of her solo career is that she has been an ally to her fellow women and the LGBTQ+ community. She’s always espoused inclusion and diversity, and standing up for your rights. This was certainly at play when she put out her first video for her debut single “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”
Videos by American Songwriter
The song was actually a reworking of a tune by Robert Hazard, but the traditional perspective of a girl-crazy guy was usurped to become an anthem for young women seeking independence in their life choices and not being judged for it. It also offered the cautionary warning of Some boys take a beautiful girl / And hide her away from the rest of the world.
In describing the making of the video to Yahoo! Music in 2018, Lauper explained, “In all of my videos you see that I dragged my friends and family with me, for two reasons. One, I was working so hard that the only time I would see them is if I brought them to work with me, and two, my video budgets were never that high — and my friends work cheap! All I had to do is buy dinner!”
But the Story Goes Deeper
When she was approached about doing the song, Lauper wanted to turn it into an anthem inspired by the women who had come before: her mother, grandmother, “and all the women that I saw in the generation before me, who were disenfranchised, completely derailed,” the singer said during a BUILD series interview in 2018.
She also talked about being half-Sicilian and how she understood the Sicilian male mentality of keeping women down, of how men wanted the women near home. “The women eventually become the free domestic help, and they become the help when you’re old,” she said. “And unfortunately, that’s how it goes for a lot of women.”
I come home, in the morning light
My mother says ‘When you gonna live your life right?’
Oh momma dear, we’re not the fortunate ones
And girls, they wanna have fun
Oh girls just wanna have fun
[RELATED: The Real Meaning Behind Cyndi Lauper’s Saucy Self-Love Serenade, “She Bop”]
Come One Come All
In her highly diverse casting choices for the promo clip—the eight other main women who are dancing and palling around with her in the video – she was very specific in her choices. The music video’s director Edd Griles—who had worked with Rainbow and Lauper’s previous band Blue Angel, and would go on to work with Huey Lewis & The News and Sheena Easton—was receptive to and supportive of the singer’s ideas.
“We got every racial group of girl—mixed, Spanish, white, black, Asian, everybody—so that every little girl who looked at that video would want to join our club,” recalled Lauper to BUILD. “And understand that every young woman, older woman, every person is entitled to a joyful experience. This past year during the great Woman’s March, all over the world ironically, I saw young women with signs that said ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun-damental Rights’ and all the stuff that I talked about in the ‘80s where everybody said, ‘Come on, don’t be so political, everything’s feminism. What’s wrong with you?’”
Lauper and Griles were very clever in how they executed the video. Lauper did not make it preachy or overtly political—she made it fun, bubbly, and upbeat. But watching it all these years later, it becomes apparent she was not only challenging the status quo in the way she portrayed herself onstage and in videos, but she was encouraging other people to challenge conventional norms.
At one point, she and her friends are dancing in a line past many different men on the street, some not quite sure what to think of the spectacle. They get some to join in their effervescent dance party, too, which concludes in her ginormous bedroom.
Speaking to a Generation
“It wasn’t just a fun video,” said Lauper. “I had to get past the gatekeepers. So we made it a lot of fun, and I made people laugh their ass off. While really I was speaking to a generation of young women, appealing to them, and I put my own mother in the video.
“There was a big thing in the ‘80s that you wouldn’t talk to your mother. And I thought, ‘Oh, You’re not going to talk to your mother or your grandmother, huh? So what they got away with with your mother and your grandmother, guess what? Be an idiot. Don’t find out what they had to go through, and you’ll be going through the same thing. You won’t learn at all.’ Because how do you conquer a people? You take away their history. That’s how you do it. How do you find your history? It’ s an oral history. You talk to your mother, your grandmother, your aunt, you find out your history. And you find out what history you want to make. It’s called her-story.”
Lauper’s message was heard loud and clear. The video was an instant hit on MTV. Her follow-up videos for “Time After Time” and “She Bop” were also big. The video success helped pushed sales of the She’s So Unusual album past 2 million within a year of its October 1983 release. It has gone on to sell 7 million copies total, and the single for “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” sold 6 million units. Meanwhile, the video has hit 1.3 billion view on YouTube as of this writing.
Impact
Lauper’s first video was nominated for 6 MTV Video Music Awards, winning for Best Female Video. She also racked up five Grammy Award nominations, winning for Best New Artist. Throughout her career she has been nominated for 16 Grammys total. She won another one for Best Musical Theater Album for Kinky Boots in 2014. That show turned Billy Porter into a star.
“Girls Just Want to Have Fun” inspired a 1985 movie. Lauper refused to be involved or let her song be used. Reportedly, New World Pictures bought the rights to Robert Hazard’s song, but could not use Lauper’s interpretation of it. That was a smart movie on her part. Why have someone dilute or twist your message if not done right? (It was not a hit.)
Sometimes one does not to be overly serious or preachy to get a point across. In the case of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” Cyndi Lauper used joy, energy, and celebration to spread her message in a positive way. But she has always been very serious about women’s rights, and the right to be yourself.
Photo by Peter Kramer/Getty Images
