CYNDI LAUPER’s Life Inspires Art

This month, Weho Pride will present Tony, Grammy, and Emmy Award winner Cyndi Lauper with the Lifetime Ally Icon Award. Also this month, Paramount+ releases a feature-length documentary about the iconic star titled Let the Canary Sing. Very fitting timing wise celebrating perhaps one of our fiercest allies during Pride month. Ironic as well, in the documentary she states she didn’t like the word icon, and she never wanted to be an icon, she wanted to be considered an artist. Well, she’s accomplished both. Not only did she challenge the norms of women in music, but she has used her voice to rally for the LGBTQ community during the height of the AIDS epidemic and beyond, she has become a veritable force in the fight for women’s rights, and she has gone before Congress to advocate for homeless youth. That, with her signature voice, unique look, and a myriad of hits, she has undeniably become an icon.

The documentary is skillfully crafted and meshes Cyndi’s life story perfectly with the soundtrack of her albums, giving an honest look at how her life inspired her art. Let the Canary Sing does not shy away from anything, it goes deep and personal and shows the obstacles, including mental and physical abuse, fighting the music industry to find her voice, the highs and lows of her career, and loss, that she has overcome. The title refers to the verdict a judge carried out when Cyndi was fighting a record label in order to keep making music. He pounded the gavel and said, “Let the canary sing.” Let her sing, indeed. Produced in part by Sony Music Entertainment, it just shows the resilience Cyndi has had and how her creativity and force continue full force. How did Cyndi know that now was the time to do a documentary?

Paramount and Sony are the producers, with Alison Ellwood directing. I provided as much material as she needed and asked for, but I stayed out of it. Otherwise, it’s not a documentary, it’s a film you make about yourself. What was not true? I said, oh, that’s not true, this is true. That’s all. And that’s I guess why you would do it while you’re still alive to make sure that it’s true.

I usually would say no to a documentary because honestly, I’m not dead. But everyone was like, you should do a documentary. And during COVID, I started doing what everybody else was doing – I watched every documentary, all kinds of things. But I saw this one film called Laurel Canyon, and Alison Ellwood was the director. I just was so moved by it, and I thought it was done so well that I thought, you know what? If I’m going to have a documentary, I want to have it done by this filmmaker, because she’s wonderful.

The documentary covers it all, going back to Cyndi’s childhood days, a child of immigrants, surrounded by a colorful and diverse Brooklyn and then Queens. There, she and her sister, who would later come out as gay, started their eclectic dive into music that included The Beatles, show tunes, and opera. After leaving home at 17, Cyndi moved in with her sister and befriended Carl and Gregory, her gay neighbors who would become her family. Cyndi and her sister would listen to music like Jim Morrison, Jimmy Hendrix, and Janis Joplin and would write music with their guitar. It was the time of Civil Rights, the activism energy is something Cyndi grew up with. After a few odd jobs, including an office job that didn’t last too long because she could only type 19 words a minute, she decided to pursue her music career. Since she wasn’t making it in the professional world, what would be the difference in not making it in the music world? At least she would still be doing what she was passionate about.

As the documentary put it, it took her 15 years to become an overnight sensation. Those 15 years were fraught with gigs and bands that didn’t quite work, full of people trying to shape her voice into something she was not, to even losing her voice for a year and being told she wasn’t going to be able to sing again. At the urging of a producer, Cyndi went to hear Robert Hazard perform “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” at a club. She leaned over and said she would never sing that song; it was too misogynistic in its approach. After trying at it with a bunch of failed demos, she changed the keys, added summer sounds from her childhood, changed the arrangement, turned the song into a female empowerment statement, and finally had her first mega-hit. Filming the music video, she insisted that it represented and included a diverse array of women. Perhaps the most important woman of all in the video is her mom… playing her mom. Family and her gay neighbors Carl and Gregory would make appearances in future Cyndi music videos. Her mom would be a constant support throughout her career. Sadly, she passed in 2022. What did Cyndi’s mom teach her most about life?

She wanted us to ask questions and always be curious and not be afraid of life the way she was raised, as an immigrant family. There’s a lot of fear when you’re an immigrant family, and she didn’t want that for us. She played lots of different music – Leonard Bernstein, Tchaikovsky, and Puccini. She played Satchmo (Louis Armstrong) and Broadway musicals, and that’s how I learned to sing. She took us to the Delacorte Theater to see Shakespeare and Greek tragedies. It was important for her to impart culture on us.

Photo by Rebecca Miller

Photo by Ruven Afanador

Being such a fierce supporter of the LGBTQ community, what was her early exposure to our community?

I gotta say it was my first director Skipper who lived around the corner. He used to put on productions in a cardboard box and I used to have a fit if I wasn’t in one of his shows, because I thought I was the bee’s knees and I should be in his shows. I was chasing after my sister too. My mother always said I was the younger one and I was born to be my sister’s friend. So, when she had another “friend,” oh God, it was awful! I started to tell her, you can’t have them, that’s why I was born!  But I got to watch firsthand when somebody in your family is LGBTQ. You just understand because you love them.

A good example of that is when I went to sing after the Marriage Protection Act was signed. I met (Senator) Tammy Baldwin and of course President Biden. But I also met this Republican senator who was always very conservative. He came up to me and he said, I want to introduce you to my (LGBTQ) child. I said to him, you know, when it’s in your family, it’s clear to understand, right? The injustice, right? As a young teen, most of my friends were gay. I was not, I wished hopefully, but I wasn’t. But as I got older, I worried about my sister because I saw the way the laws were, the way people were, and that it was dangerous.

“True Colors,” a single from Cyndi’s second studio album by the same name, came out in 1986, during the AIDS epidemic. Not only would the song become another hit for Lauper, but it would be embraced by the queer community as our anthem. The song would resonate for Lauper because of the death of her friend and former neighbor Gregory to AIDS. Cyndi would embark on two True Colors tours raising money and awareness for LGBTQ rights. She also established the True Colors Fund, a non-profit with a mission to eradicate LGBTQ youth homelessness. Letters to Cyndi would start to pour in from the queer community, all telling her their stories and how much “True Colors” meant to them.

When “True Colors” first came out, I talked about AIDS. That was not popular; probably cost me a few jobs, but it was the right thing to do. So, when the time came and I started reading those letters, I called my sister (Ellen) and I said, we have to do something. You, me. And she said, all right, I’m in. Ellen’s always said that, God bless her. She’s always there. PFLAG was doing the Stay Close campaign, which was the first thing we did. And I started to do a lot of research about the community. Like what I actually could do, what actually within the community that straight people don’t see is going on?

On her True Colors tours, she included everyone. Gay, trans, straight, celebrities, activists, everyone.

You know how fabulous that is. I love that. To me, that’s my favorite – a rainbow tribe which means all of us. Because if one person’s civil rights are taken away, all of ours could be taken away. If we’re all not equal, we’re not equal, pal! One week, it’s that guy. Next week might be you. That’s when I remembered the Civil Rights movement of the ’60s and how it was inclusive of everybody standing up and saying, no, we don’t want this. And then even after all of that, things are rolling back to the dark ages again.

So, what I really want you to tell everybody, is VOTE. Go to vote411.org and find out who is your ally. Who is gonna stick up for you? Vote for that person. I’m not going to tell you who to vote for, but your democracy is at stake this time. So you better step up for yourself. You can’t slack off.

In addition to “True Colors,” her second mega-hit “Time After Time” has become a ballad for all of those lost to AIDS/HIV. The AIDS epidemic affected Cyndi greatly.

The government was not talking about it. They were pretending it wasn’t happening. And then they decided to make it a gay plague. Anyone can get AIDS, anybody. You have to protect yourself. I just think so much is at stake right now. Now, young women have no autonomy over their own bodies paying the same tax as a man but not the same rights. The LGBTQ community, they’re looking to strip rights away from you all. Lemme tell you something, you pay the same taxes, and you want the same civil rights and protections that everybody else as an American is supposed to have. It’s a strange time right now. Very strange. But you can’t give up. You can’t throw in the towel because if you do, you are going to find yourself in a very bad position. You must raise your voice and vote. That’s the biggest thing.

Cyndi was even sticking up for the drag community way before there was Drag Race.

I did the Gay Games with a bunch of friends who were drag performers. They were fantastic. Oh my God, the shoes alone, you would’ve died! But they didn’t put them, and this was the Gay Games, they did not put them on the Jumbotron, and I’m dancing in between them. And it pissed me off. Then I started to think to myself, oh, so you can turn against people in the community? I thought to myself, okay, I know what I could do. I have to do a video for this. We will put out “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” with drag queens. I’ll make them famous, and you’ll see them because I’ll direct it. And that’s what I did. And they were so cool, so great. It was such a great experience because, to me, a drag performer is a very Fellini-esque type of performer. I think sometimes I’m a drag queen because I’ll dress up as anything as you know. I guess it’s just how I grew up. I feel more at home with the community because I’m a friend and family member.

“(Hey Now) Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” was released in 1994…featuring drag queens.

Being given the Weho Pride Lifetime Ally Icon Award, though no less important, follows a long line of accolades and awards that Cyndi has been honored with for her work for women and LGBTQ rights.

In 2003, when I heard the President at that time make a weird remark about gay bashing and hate crimes, it wasn’t okay for me. And that’s what motivated me to get off of my ass and stop fooling around. And when in New York, the Marriage Equality Act was voted down, I knew a lot of people wanted to leave the country and I felt like, you know what, I’m not leaving this country. It’s still our country. It’s everybody’s country. It’s not up to a select few who decide to ignore the Constitution and put their religious beliefs on everybody, that’s not what this country was built on.

Together we can all do amazing things because not one group of people is going to think of everything. And if you start shutting off other communities, you don’t know who you’re shutting off. You don’t know which one of those people is a little genius and they’re going to think about the solution to pollution or the solution to cancer, or the solution to economic whatever. You don’t know! But together, we’re strong. And that’s why you need to share stories with your friends, with people you know. And if you want people to listen to you, you better listen to them.

And her message to the LGBTQ community?

I love you. Let’s have some fun. Let’s celebrate our differences and let us not get so trashed that you can’t take care of yourself. And vote! Vote. I love you.

Let the Canary Sing is streaming on Paramount+.