Jump to content

User:Pixelyoshi/Sandbox5

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Untitled

She's So Unusual is the debut studio album by American pop singer-songwriter Cyndi Lauper, released in 1983 by Portrait Records (see 1983 in music). The album catapulted Lauper to stardom with such hits as "Girls Just Want to Have Fun", "She Bop" and "Time After Time". The album has sold 9 million copies worldwide.[1]

Background[edit]

After the breakup of her band [Blue Angel] and a cooling-off period, Cyndi Lauper decided to pursue a solo career after all.[2]

Development[edit]

"He played me "Girls..." and I said, well I ain't doing that song... because it wasn't what it ended up to be—which is something that I'll never forget that Rick did for me. I was so headstrong and so set. It was basically a very chauvinistic song. He said, ‘but wait, think about what it could mean, just think about it for a minute, forget all this other stuff, and think about what it could mean.’ I said, ‘Well how could I do that? Look at this and look at that.’ He said, ‘so change it’.[3]

Rick Chertoff brought "Girls Just Want to Have Fun", a song written by Robert Hazard in a quarter of an hour in a motel tub.[4] She slightly changed the lyrics as the Hazard's version was "misogynistic" according to her.[4] Hazard's original version had been fashioned as an inflated male fantasy of female desire.[3]

The sixth track, "All Through the Night", was written by Jules Shear and included on his 1983 debut solo album, Watch Dog.[5] Shear later recalled in an interview, "[it's] like a big bonus really. Cyndi Lauper does a song ('All Through the Night') that's on a solo record of mine. I just thought, 'No one's really going to hear this.' Then she does it, and it becomes a Top 5 song."[6] "I'm just glad people know the songs, really. I think they're really good. The only problem is with people who don't know I wrote them. I do them and they think, 'God, he's doing that Cyndi Lauper song.' "[7] Before Lauper covered the song, the band The Cars produced an early version of it that was not released.[8] Shear's version was originally a folk-rock song, but Lauper instead turned it into a pop ballad for her album, with a heavy emphasis on a synthesizer.[9][10] According to Lauper, she wanted it to be just like Shear's version, with a bit more of an acoustic sound. However, she changed her mind, saying that she wanted to sing it like herself.[11]

Composition[edit]

Lauper sings "All Through the Night" in the key of A-flat major.[12] The song is set in common time and moves at a moderate tempo of 120 beats per minute.[12] Lauper's voice spans an octave and a half between G3 and C5. The chorus was unintentionally altered by Lauper from the Shear version when she heard the upper harmony vocal and thought it was the lead vocal.[11] Lyrically, "All Through the Night" addresses the same concept of love and its tug at heart-strings as was emphasized by Lauper's previous single, "Time After Time".[13]

Album information[edit]

The album was nominated for six Grammy Awards:

It was produced by Rick Chertoff and William Wittman. Chertoff would go on to produce Nervous Night for The Hooters. He would also team up with Wittman to produce singer-songwriter Patty Smyth's debut album, Never Enough for MCA in 1987.

In 2003, the album was ranked number 494 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Track listing[edit]

  1. "Money Changes Everything" (Tom Gray; Gray Matter Music/ATV Music Corp.) – 5:06
  2. "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" (Robert Hazard; Heroic Music) – 3:58
  3. "When You Were Mine" (Prince; Ecnirp Music) – 5:06
  4. "Time After Time" (Rob Hyman, Lauper; Dub Notes, Rella Music) – 4:03
  5. "She Bop" (Rick Chertoff, Gary Corbett, Lauper, Stephen Broughton Lunt; Rellla Music Co., Noyb Music Co., Wall To Wall Music Co. & Hobbler Music) – 3:51
  6. "All Through The Night" (Jules Shear; Funzalo Music/Juters Music Co.) – 4:33
  7. "Witness" (Lauper, John Turi; Turalaura Music and Turi Music ) – 3:40
  8. "I'll Kiss You" (Lauper, Shear; Rellla Music Co., Funzalo Music / Juters Music Co.) – 4:12
  9. "He's So Unusual" (Al Sherman, Al Lewis, Abner Silver; Shapiro, Bernstein & Co. Inc) – 0:45
  10. "Yeah Yeah" (Hasse Huss, Mikael Rickfors; Stainless Music Corp.) – 3:18
  11. "Money Changes Everything (Live)" (Gray) – 4:35 (From the Portrait Promotional 12-inch)
  12. "She Bop (Live)" (Chertoff, Corbett, Lauper, Lunt) – 5:20
  13. "All Through the Night (Live)" (Shear) – 4:48
  14. "Money Changes Everything (Live)" (live at Summer Sonic 07) (2008 Japanese exclusive limited edition)
  • Tracks 11 to 14 are bonus tracks on the 2008 remastered version.
  • "Right Track, Wrong Train" (Lauper, Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Kent) was recorded for the album but only appeared on the B-side of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun"

Reception[edit]

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Alternative Press(favorable)[14]
Allmusic[15]
Slant Magazine[16]
Rolling Stone[17]
Robert Christgau{A)[18]

allmusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine gave the record 3.5 stars, calling it "giddy mix of self-confidence, effervescent popcraft, unabashed sentimentality, subversiveness, and clever humor".

Chart performance[edit]

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Pixelyoshi/Sandbox5&oldid=785135535"