Cyndi Lauper rewrote a sexist song and helped push wrestling onto MTV
Cyndi Lauper thought the original lyrics of Girls Just Want to Have Fun were misogynistic, so she reworked it into an anthem for young women. Its video won the first Best Female Video award from MTV and co-starred the wrestling manager Lou Albano as her dad, which kicked off an unlikely partnership between pop and pro wrestling.
Lauper was born in Brooklyn on June 22, 1953, and grew up in Ozone Park, Queens, listening to the Beatles and Judy Garland. At 12 she began writing songs on a guitar from her sister. Her dyed hair and odd clothes got her bullied, a friend persuaded her to spell her name Cyndi, and she was expelled from high school before leaving home at 17 to study art in Vermont.
Her first break flopped. The band Blue Angel released one album in 1980; she said the cover made her look like Big Bird, and joked that the record went lead. After the band fired its manager, his lawsuit for 80,000 dollars pushed her into bankruptcy, and a cyst on a vocal cord briefly silenced her. She waitressed at IHOP and sang in clubs until David Wolff, who became her manager, got her signed to Portrait Records.
She's So Unusual arrived on October 14, 1983, and no female artist had ever landed four top-five Hot 100 singles from a debut album, among them Time After Time and She Bop, which she co-wrote. It eventually sold 16 million copies and won her the Grammy for Best New Artist. Wolff, a wrestling fan since boyhood, built the rock and wrestling connection: Lauper feuded on screen with Albano and managed Wendi Richter to a women's title in a match broadcast live on MTV in July 1984. A Salt Lake City radio station later credited her with helping push the WWF into the mainstream.
Her four-octave voice carried later hits such as True Colors and I Drove All Night. In 2013 she won the Tony for Best Original Score for the musical Kinky Boots, the first woman to take that award on her own, and her tally of Grammy, Emmy and Tony leaves her one Oscar short of the full set.
Source: Cyndi Lauper
