‘Everybody that came to see me perform needed a place to let their freak flag fly’

Cyndi Lauper, the rebellious, joyful sprite of Girls Just Want to Have Fun’, talks to Adam White about the US president, masturbation anthems, and burning her training bra in 1968

- Adam White

Speaking to Cyndi Lauper is, I imagine, much like going on a road trip with Cyndi Lauper. She will not stay on course, is easily distracted, and will insist upon detours. You will eventually reach your intended destination, but by that point the car is a mess: sunroof gone, tyre spiked, debris everywhere. “Did I answer anything for you or was I just rambling?” the 71year-old asks at the end of a long jaunt that touches on retirement, Robbie Williams, community organising in 16thcentury Switzerland, and how it’s amazing that she’s still friends with a woman named Francine Petrella whom she’s known since they were in fourth grade together. No wait, 10th grade.

I suppose it is amazing. But would you expect anything less from Lauper, a pop star who has always – even in her vaudevillian, rainbow-coloured, “art class oddball” way – seemed blessedly earthbound, with her heart worn on her sleeve at all times and the unmistakeable aura of a kind stranger or fairy godmother.

“From the early days, everybody that came to see me perform were people that were kind of sad,” she says with a laugh, her Queens, NY, accent so thick that “kind of” becomes “keen-da”, “sad” becomes “see-ad”. “They were people who needed somebody to talk to, who needed a place to go and let their freak flag fly.”

Lauper’s biggest hits are compassionate and rebellious, with massive choruses and plastic-y sparkle, as if injected with artificial sweetener. The soaring “I Drove All Night”. The sweet cheese of “The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough”. Her titanic ballads “Time After Time” and “True Colors” are so hushed and tender in their intimacy that it’s as if Lauper is singing to you and you only. And then there’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”, the first track off her multi-platinum-selling debut album She’s So Unusual (1983). It remains a cross-generational masterstroke – glittery, hopeful, a funfair.