Cyndi Lauper: ‘I didn’t think my lyrics were so nasty – but all of a sudden it got loony’

The rebellious, joyful sprite of ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’ is about to embark on a farewell arena tour in the UK. She talks to Adam White about Trump, masturbation anthems, and burning her training bra in 1968. 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 71-year-old asks at the end of a long jaunt that touches on retirement, Robbie Williams, community organising in 16th-century 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 vaudevillean, 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.

It’s an effect Lauper is hoping to replicate on the UK and Ireland leg of her farewell tour, which kicks off in Glasgow on 8 February. Over the line from her home in New York – sans camera, as it’s “really early and I don’t want to scare you”, she says – Lauper is quick to offer some caveats. Yes, it’s a farewell, but only to a specific kind of giant arena tour with all the associated bells and whistles. “The show I do right now? I can do it,” she says. “But I’m 71, so I don’t know how I’m going to be in four years’ or five years’ time.” Plus she’s in the advanced stages of bringing a musical based on the Melanie Griffith comedy Working Girl to Broadway (she previously wrote the music and lyrics for the smash hit Kinky Boots). There’s only so much time in the day.

Recent events have pushed her further, she adds. We’re speaking a few days after Donald Trump’s inauguration, and Lauper is in low spirits. “I can’t watch the news any more,” she sighs. “But listen, this is our new president. The people who voted for him and the people who didn’t vote for him, we’re all counting on him to do better.” Lauper speaks not with anger, but with despondency. “It was a little disheartening to see the guy do the ‘heil Hitler’ sign,” she says, in reference to a gesture made by Elon Musk at the inauguration that he still hasn’t denied was a Nazi salute. “Especially when my father and my grandfather fought fascism in this country so hard. But, you know, America voted, and I do believe in the system, so…” She trails off. “Listen, it’s a little weird all over the world right now. I just wanna do shows that bring people together.”.

Lauper brought her tour to Florida – prime Trump country – a day after the US election in November, and thought there was something almost utopian about it. “The show gave them hope and made them happy,” she says. “Everybody dressed up, because it’s a safe place, right? It was joyful, and we were all dancing together. And we’re all Americans, you know? You can divide yourself any which way you want, but we’re all from immigrant parents, all of us – unless you’re Native American, and then you got screwed badly, or your great-great-grandparents were kidnapped from Africa, you know? But, bottom line, we’re American, we’re a mix of everything, and that’s what it is.”.

I scared a lot of people, and the suits didn’t understand that I wanted to live an artist’s life. Lauper sells coloured wigs at every stop on her tour – inspired by the variety of shades she has adopted over the years – with the proceeds going to her foundation Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights, which helps to fund organisations that provide access to abortion and reproductive health services worldwide. It’s long been the Lauper way. At the peak of her commercial success in the Eighties, she used her platform to speak on the developing Aids epidemic, even though it was professionally risky. She made it clear, for instance, that “True Colors” was sung in tribute to one of her best friends, Gregory Natal, who had died of the disease. “I didn’t realise that was going to come in the way of sponsors actually funding a tour because I was talking about Aids,” she says. “But I didn’t really care, because what was most important was to talk about it. This is the thing: if you can help, then you should.”.