Cyndi Lauper – Girls Just Want To Have Fun ….Under The Covers Tuesday

It’s a rare event that I post a top ten song of the eighties but this song was a cover and I didn’t know that for the longest. In the 80s my favorite female singers of that time were Maria McKee from Lone Justice and Patty Smyth of Scandal. As far as mainstream artists…I did like Cyndi Lauper and Pat Benatar at the time. My then-girlfriend played Lauper constantly so I gradually started to like her music like Money Changes Everything.

This song was her breakout song and never did I think it was a cover. She released an album in 1981 as a member of the group Blue Angel, but “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” made her famous. She turned the song into a 1980s anthem. The song was on the album She’s So Unusual released in 1983.

Singer/songwriter named Robert Hazard, who had a band called Robert Hazard and the Heroes, wrote it and released it in 1979. It was much more rock guitar based than Lauper’s version.

Lauper had trouble recording the song. They tried it in different ways but nothing worked. Lauper listened to Come On Eileen and was inspired by that…they did it in that tempo and it worked.

The song peaked at #2 on the Billboard 100, #1 in Canada, #1 in New Zealand, and #2 in the UK in 1983. She would have two number 1’s in Billboard with Time After Time and True Colors.

The album She’s So Unusual peaked at #4 on the Billboard Album Charts, #1 in Canada, #3 in New Zealand, and #16 in the UK. She had 5 charting singles off of that album…four top 5 songs including a number 1 and one top 30 song.

The video made for the song features the wrestler Captain Lou Albano as Lauper’s father, and also Lauper’s real-life mother, who had no acting experience. It won the first ever award for Best Female Video at the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards. Albano was also in her next video, “Time After Time.”

What’s an eighties song without a parody from Weird Al?… “Girls Just Wanna Have Lunch.” He said he didn’t want to make fun of women so he kept it at lunch. Lauper said: “I like Weird Al. I LOVED ‘Like a Surgeon.’ I thought he was going to make MORE fun of Girls just wanna have lunch. But it wasn’t hard. Because everybody thought I was an alien, I spoke funny and I dressed funny… Not hard to make fun of.”

Cyndi Lauper: “I wanted ‘Girls Just Want To Have Fun’ to be an anthem for women around the world – and I mean all women – and a sustaining message that we are powerful human beings. I made sure that when a woman saw the video, she would see herself represented, whether she was thin or heavy, glamorous or not, and whatever race she was.”

Girls Just Want To Have Fun

I come home in the morning light
My mother says, “When you gonna live your life right?”
Oh, mother dear, we’re not the fortunate ones
And girls they wanna have fun
Oh, girls just wanna have fun

The phone rings in the middle of the night
My father yells, “What you gonna do with your life?”
Oh, daddy dear, you know you’re still number one
But girls they wanna have fun
Oh, girls just wanna have

That’s all they really want
Some fun
When the working day is done
Oh, girls, they wanna have fun
Oh, girls just wanna have fun

(Girls they want, wanna have fun)
(Girls wanna have)

Some boys take a beautiful girl
And hide her away from the rest of the world
I wanna be the one to walk in the sun
Oh, girls they wanna have fun
Oh, girls just wanna have

That’s all they really want
Is some fun
When the working day is done
Oh, girls, they wanna have fun
Oh, girls just wanna have fun

(Girls they want, wanna have fun)
(Girls wanna have)

They just wanna, they just wanna (girls)
They just wanna, they just wanna (girls just wanna have fun)
Oh, girls, girls just wanna have fun

(They just wanna, they just wanna)
They just wanna, they just wanna (girls)
They just wanna, they just wanna (girls just wanna have fun)
Oh, girls, girls just wanna have fun

When the workin’
When the workin’ day is done
Oh, when the workin’ day is done
Oh, girls, girls just wanna have fun
Everybody, ha, ha

They just wanna, they just wanna (girls)
They just wanna, they just wanna (girls just wanna have fun)
Oh, girls, yeah, girls just wanna have fun

(They just wanna, they just wanna)
When the workin’
When the workin’ day is done, oh (they just wanna, they just wanna)
When the workin’ day is done (girls)
(Girls just wanna have fun)
Oh, girl, girls just wanna have fun

(They just wanna, they just wanna) Everybody now
Yeah, yeah, yeah
(They just wanna, they just wanna) Yeah, yeah
Girls

Advertisement

Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball fan, old movie and tv show fan... and a songwriter, bass and guitar player.

39 thoughts on “Cyndi Lauper – Girls Just Want To Have Fun ….Under The Covers Tuesday”

  1. This was EVERYWHERE back then. You can’t hear the song without singing along ‘goyles just wanna have fuuu-uhhhn,’ its that kind of earworm song. Also, interesting that they did it in the Dexys style. Once you know that you can hear it all through the song.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  6. The tune certainly needed a woman’s touch ( no connection to another of her songs;). We did seem to love her in Canada. Some weird Al trivia, my youngest daughter who was a competitive dancer at the time danced in the background for his performance of this song in London some years back. She said he was very nice and gave her $50!

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

  8. A great, if overplayed, ’80s tune. I knew she didn’t write it but I don’t think I knew Hazard had actually recorded it too. Definitely she made it her own. That whole album of hers was very likable & quite different than what else was happening at the time.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  11. further to what Bruce said, and Randy’s comments too, Weird Al seems like a thoroughly decent guy and it seems like Prince was the only real star in the ’80s who flat out refused to let Al parody anything he did… which doesn’t speak all that well for Mr. Paisely Park

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. That totally makes sense…he didn’t like anyone to cover his songs…he was pissed at The Foo Fighters for covering one of his songs.

      Like

      Reply

  14. I liked Cindy Lauper back in the ’80s and still do to this day – certainly cannot say the same about many other ’80s acts! I had never heard the original of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” – once you hear that (and it’s not bad, BTW), you realize that Lauper truly made it her own. Weird Al is super-talented and nearly always cracks me up!

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Yea I can’t say I like a lot of others also…from the 80s.
      It’s not bad but a woman sure needed to sing it…to me anyway. She did a great job.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  16. Very cool post, Max. Thanks for the intro to the original. Wonderful blast to the past on the video. I think Cindy is currently doing some kind of Broadway show but forgot the deets.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: