TORONTO – Cyndi Lauper has several reasons to celebrate this month. In addition to winning her first Tony Award on Sunday night – for her original score for Kinky Boots – Lauper turns 60 on June 22 and marks the 30th anniversary of her breakthrough hit “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”
The song was recorded in June 1983 at The Record Plant in New York City (it was released as a single three months later).
“Girls Just Want to Have Fun” sold 2 million copies and reached the No. 1 spot on charts in 10 countries, including Canada. South of the border, the single peaked at No. 2 but spent 50 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100.
The song was nominated at the 1985 Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance but failed to win either. Lauper, however, won a Grammy for Best New Artist.
“Girls Just Want to Have Fun” won Best Female Video at the MTV Video Music Awards, where it was nominated in six categories.
Here are 10 more fun facts about “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”
1. “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” was made famous by Lauper but was written four years earlier by Robert Hazard. Finding the original version misogynistic, Lauper revised the lyrics to create a feminist anthem. Hazard died in 2008, just two weeks shy of his 60th birthday, after a battle with pancreatic cancer.
2. “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” was the first single from Lauper’s debut album She’s So Unusual but it wasn’t her first single. The singer released a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “You Make Loving Fun” in 1977 and several singles while part of the group Blue Angel.
3. Cyndi Lauper was 30 years old when “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” was released – a late start to a pop music career. (For comparison, Britney Spears was 16 and Christina Aguilera was 18 when their first singles were released.)
4. The video for “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” was made on a budget of only $35,000. Everyone appearing in the video – including secretaries from Lauper’s record label and her manager and lawyer – volunteered their time, which helped keep costs down.
5. Lauper’s real-life mother Catrine played herself in the video but Lauper’s father was portrayed by wrestling manager “Captain” Lou Albano. The singer’s brother Fred also appears in the video.
6. The old movie Lauper is watching in the “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” video is 1923’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame starring Lon Chaney as Quasimodo.
7. The bedroom scene at the end of the video was inspired by the stateroom scene in the 1935 Marx Brothers’ film A Night at the Opera.
8. The video for “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” has some state-of-the-art (at the time) visual effects thanks to digital editing equipment belonging to Toronto’s Lorne Michaels.
9. The video was filmed on New York’s Lower East Side. The early scene of Lauper dancing down the street was filmed on Gay Street.
10. Although it seems like more, Lauper sings the full title, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” only 10 times in the song.
Watch the video for “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” here:
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