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Cyndi Lauper review – 80s pop eccentric hasn’t changed a bit
Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne
Her farewell tour is a pockmarked history of her roots and wide-ranging influences, full of her trademark elan and vigour
Fandom isn’t a good look on a critic; we’re supposed to be sober and impartial, analytical and measured. What to do, then, when called upon to review your favourite idol, the singer who first turned you on to the power of pop? Judicious rumination or tinny screams of delight?
There’s room for both in this swan song from 80s pop eccentric Cyndi Lauper, as irrepressible here as when I saw her as a teenager, then touring her new album True Colours. She’s had an illustrious career, including a side gig composing musicals – Kinky Boots, and soon an adaptation of 80s workplace comedy Working Girl – but the bulk of her hits are drawn from her first two albums, including the astonishing debut She’s So Unusual.
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun – the song that gives this farewell tour its name – is also by far Lauper’s most famous – though the audience has to wait till the very end for it, in a riot of colour and light directly inspired by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. In the buildup, we get a pockmarked history of Lauper’s roots and musical inclinations. Those less familiar with her are likely to be shocked by her power and versatility, her voice ranging across blues, jazz, rock and country without ever losing its bright pop sensibility.
The night opens with the quirky, infectious She Bop, followed quickly by The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough – a song she refused to play live for many years until she was badgered by Australian fans into including it. Both are performed with elan and vigour, Lauper’s signature jittery moves and syncopated inflections demonstrating the idiosyncrasy of her talent. I Drove All Night comes soon after, sultry and looping, her voice still carrying plenty of heft and texture.
Throughout, the show is peppered with numbers from later albums in a retrospective of Lauper’s outre career. We get an excellent rendition of Who Let In the Rain, from her 1993 record Hatful of Stars, the LED screens providing a torrential background to the sweetly melancholic ballad. Sally’s Pigeons, also from that album, is supported by a vivid recollection of her childhood in blue-collar Queens, including a video essay of memories and associations.
A massive part of Lauper’s appeal as a live performer, apart from the sheer virtuosity of her voice, is the rambling, discursive monologues that bookend many of the songs. They give a sense not only of the warmth and humility of the woman but the audacity and authenticity of the artist, who shot like a strange comet from the working-class Italian-American family of her youth. There is something endearingly homespun about the show, like an extremely well-resourced slide night.
© Photograph: Lauri Jean
© Photograph: Lauri Jean
