Cyndi Lauper at Madison Square Garden

On This Farewell Tour, This Girl Just Wants to Have Fun, Time After Time

Three days after former president Donald Trump held a controversial campaign rally at Madison Square Garden, Cyndi Lauper brought her own campaign to the same stage. Lauper, who has publicly supported Vice President Kamala Harris for the U.S. presidency, was headlining the arena on her Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Farewell Tour. The pop singer came prepared to bring a warmer and more fun-filled experience to New York City.

Earlier in the evening, Lauper posted on social media an eight-second video of her dancing on the Madison Square Garden stage during her soundcheck. She noted in the caption that she was “doing an interpretive dance before my show to restore love and light to the Garden.” Her message became stronger once the concert began.

“It’s about time [women] start stepping forward and voting for ourselves. We need equality – and I ain’t going back, that’s for sure,” she said to the audience early in the concert. “We need a lot of love here tonight to dissipate a lot of the hate that was here.” She comically concluded, “I wasn’t going to say this, but then I did.”

Lauper, whom President Barack Obama invited to his second inauguration in 2013 because of her humanitarian and charitable work, thanked members of her audience for buying wigs at the merchandise tables. She noted that the proceeds of these sales will go to her Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights Fund at the Tides Foundation. She added that this revenue would help provide “safe and legal abortions… women’s healthcare, prenatal care, postnatal care, cancer screenings — women’s health.”

In 1983, with her first solo album, She’s So Unusual, Lauper became the first female artist to achieve four Top 5 singles from a debut album. "Girls Just Want to Have Fun", "Time After Time", "She Bop", and "All Through the Night" and her powerful and distinctive four-octave vocal range earned Lauper the Best New Artist award at the 1985 Grammy Awards.

With her strong local accent, wild hair and outfits, she quickly became an outsized celebrity. She became a wrestling icon as a sidekick to Hulk Hogan and a frenemy to Captain Lou Albano. In 1985, Lauper was among the participants in the recording of "We Are the World," a charity single recorded by the supergroup USA for Africa, which raised money for the 1983-1985 famine in Ethiopia. She was the musical director, appeared in a cameo, and had a hit song with the 1985 film The Goonies. In 1986, Lauper’s second album, True Colors, included the chart-topping single "True Colors" and "Change of Heart", which peaked at number three.

By the end of the 1980s, the hits stopped coming, and Lauper reinvented herself. She composed the music for the Broadway musical Kinky Boots, and in 2013 won a Tony Award for Best Original Score, making her the first woman to win the category by herself. The stage production won five other Tony Awards, including Best New Musical. In 2014, Lauper received the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album for the cast recording.

Lauper released her 11^th and most recent studio album, Detour, in 2016. She reportedly has sold over 50 million records worldwide.

Even before Lauper’s tour started, Lauper received numerous accolades. In 2023, she was nominated (but not inducted) into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Her documentary, “Let the Canary Sing,” premiered at the 2023 TriBeCa Film Festival. In late 2023, Nicki Minaj sampled Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” on a rap song called “Pink Friday Girls”; this past May, Minaj welcomed Lauper onstage at Barclays Center to perform the song live as a duet. This past September, Katy Perry brought Lauper on stage at the Rock in Rio music festival in Brazil to team on "Time After Time.”

Lauper’s concerts were packaged as a farewell tour, but the 71-year-old singer told Jimmy Kimmel this past June that she is not entirely retiring, she just wanted to complete one more tour while she was still healthy enough to travel the world. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Queens, Lauper’s homecoming concert was her first headlining concert at her hometown arena since a radio station’s Christmas concert in 1986. As the lights dimmed at Madison Square Garden for her final New York City concert, Lauper’s musicians took their positions, led by music director William Wittman, who played on her debut album.

Lauper came on stage in a wild outfit and wig. In her trademark loud and clear vocals, Lauper boldly started her set by singing the controversial lyrics alluding to masturbation in “She Bop,” a song which the Parents Music Resource Center named as one of its “Filthy Fifteen” in 1985. She segued into “The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough” from the The Goonies soundtrack, a song she dropped from her live set years ago but then revived due to fan requests. By the third song, her cover of Prince’s “When You Were Mine,” she had thoroughly time traveled her audience to the 1980s.

Throughout the concert, Lauper caught her breath between songs by telling anecdotes of her musical history. Before singing “The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough,” she said a famous actor told her he was a big fan of The Goonies, assured the crowd she would never namedrop, then paused and said “Andrew Garfield.” After singing “I Drove All Night,” she said “I still can’t parallel park for sh-t.” In introducing “I’m Gonna Be Strong,” a Gene Pitney cover that she first sang in the band Blue Angel before she went solo, she joked about struggling to sing the song before learning its key changes. “I tried to sing like him and I kind of sounded like Ethel Merman.”

Lauper’s production engaged the audience’s attention throughout the performance. The LED screens projected close-up footage of the show, a humorous backstage skit, and nostalgic clips of Lauper’s five-decade career. The set wove in several wardrobe changes, each wilder than the next. During her cover of “Iko Iko,” Lauper played a washboard, worn over her blouse, and danced with her musicians. During “Sally’s Pigeons,” as she sang on the main stage, a large white fabric artistically and hypnotically danced above a second stage in the middle of the arena floor, the cloth manipulated by hidden wind and suction devices along the edge of the platform. During the conclusion of “Money Changes Everything,” Lauper rolled on the stage floor.

The show had a bigger surprise. Lauper sang the first verse of “Time After Time,” then introduced Sam Smith, who had come to New York to attend the God's Love We Deliver Golden Heart Awards at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine on October 21. The duo had previously performed at the White House in 2022 when President Biden signed into law the Respect for Marriage Act. On the Madison Square Garden stage, Lauper and Smith held hands as they sang the song as a duet, then slow-danced together during the instrumental break. Smith reportedly watched the remainder of the show from the side of the stage.

To start the three-song encore, Lauper walked through the audience singing “Shine,” giving high fives along her way to the second stage. While singing “True Colors,” she waved a long rainbow-hued fabric in the air, billowing gracefully with the help of the wind and suction devices. She closed the night by belting her signature tune, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” during which she encouraged the audience to sing along on the chorus, saying “Say it loud enough to get rid of all the bad energy in here.”

If this was truly her final live concert in New York City, Lauper proved that she is turning the chapter while still on a high in her career. While her lesser-known songs did not have the impact of her fan favorites, her vocals were in fine shape, soaring even higher towards the end of the performance than in the beginning. The set included most of her familiar songs, although “All Through the Night” was an unanticipated omission. Her wardrobe changes brought color, and her stage banter delivered personality. Her unique exuberance tied together every component of the production. Lauper is still so unusual.

Setlist

1. She Bop
2. The Goonies 'R' Good Enough
3. When You Were Mine (Prince cover)
4. I Drove All Night
5. Who Let in the Rain
6. Iko Iko (Sugar Boy and His Cane Cutters cover)
7. Funnel of Love (Wanda Jackson cover)
8. Sally's Pigeons
9. I'm Gonna Be Strong (Frankie Laine cover)
10. Sisters of Avalon
11. Change of Heart
12. Time After Time (duet with Sam Smith)
13. Money Changes Everything (The Brains cover)

Encore

1. Shine
2. True Colors
3. Girls Just Want to Have Fun

All photographs by Getty Images.

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The Manhattan Beat reports on New York City's live music circuit. All articles are written by Everynight Charley Crespo. All photographs are taken by Everynight Charley Crespo, except when noted otherwise.

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