Lauper was born in Brooklyn to a Catholic family. Her father, Fred, was of German and Swiss descent. Her mother, Catrine, is of Italian descent. Lauper’s siblings are younger brother Fred and older sister, Ellen. Lauper’s parents divorced when she was five. Her mother remarried and divorced again. Lauper grew up in the Ozone Park neighborhood of Queens. At age 12, she began writing songs and playing an acoustic guitar given to her by her sister. Lauper expressed herself with a variety of hair colors and eccentric clothing, and took a friend’s advice to spell her name as “Cyndi” rather than “Cindy”. Her unconventional sense of style led to classmates bullying and throwing stones at her.
In the early 1970s, Lauper performed as a vocalist with various cover bands. One, called Doc West, covered disco songs as well as Janis Joplin. A later band, Flyer, was active in the New York metropolitan area, singing hits by bands including Jefferson Airplane and Led Zeppelin. Although Lauper was performing on stage, she was not happy singing covers. In 1977, Lauper damaged her vocal cords and took a year off from singing. She was told by doctors that she would never sing again, but regained her voice with the help of vocal coach Katie Agresta.
In October 1983, Lauper released her first solo album, She’s So Unusual. The album became a worldwide hit, peaking at No. 4 in the U.S. and reaching the top five in eight other countries. Lauper became popular with teenagers and critics, in part due to her hybrid punk image, which was crafted by stylist Patrick Lucas.[Lauper co-wrote four songs on She’s So Unusual, including the hits “Time After Time” and “She Bop”. On the songs she did not write, Lauper sometimes changed the lyrics. Such is the case with “Girl’s Just Want Have Fun” Lauper found the original lyrics to be misogynistic, so she rewrote the song as an anthem for young women.
The album’s second single, “Time After Time”, co-written by Lauper and Rob Hyman, hit No. 1 on both the Billboard and Adult Contemporary charts. The song would earn Lauper a Gold Disc for record sales that reached 500,000 copies, and was later covered by Miles Davis. It became a staple of Davis’s live shows at the time, featuring on a live album. The other Billboard singles on She’s So Unusual were “She Bop” (No. 3), “All Through the Night” (No. 5). In 1985, Lauper released the single “The Goonies R Good Enough”, from the soundtrack to the movie The Goonies, and an accompanying video which featured several wrestling stars. The song reached number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The Goonies was an absolute favourite od David’s and we watched it endlessly one year when were on holiday in Gran Canaria.
Lauper released her second album, True Colours in 1986. It reached No. 4 on the Billboard. It sold 2 million copies in the US. She increased her involvement in production and songwriting on her second album, co-writing most of the songs. True Colours was not as commercially successful as She’s So Unusual, but it did contain three high-charting singles, including the title track, “True Colours”, which became Lauper’s second song to hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
A Night To Remember, Lauper’s third album – was released in the spring of 1989. The album had one hit, the No. 6 single “I Drove All Night”, originally recorded by Roy Orbison, three years before his death on December 6, 1988. Lauper received a Grammy nomination for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance at the 1990 Grammy Awards for “I Drove All Night”, but overall album sales for A Night to Remember were down.
