Cyndi Lauper’s return to London last Tuesday was quite a bit different from her previous stop-off in the Big Smoke. Whilst her Royal Albert Hall show back in June was much more celebratory (with Cyndi memorably kicking off proceedings with “Let’s get this puarty started!”), last week’s “farewell” show was 25% gig, 25% “An Evening with”–style raconteurage, 25% PRIDE parade and 25% DNC convention, making for a set that added up to something other than a gig. Your mileage may vary as to whether or not that’s a good thing.
Of course, being a fan of Cyndi’s ’80s output, I, once again, enjoyed the gig. Cyndi kicking off proceedings with a video montage that exploded into genital-fondling anthem ‘She Bop’ was a nice (hur hur) touch. Other highlights included an especially impassioned vocal performance of ‘I Drove All Night’, the always pleasurable ‘Goonies’ R’ Good Enough’, and her ode to romantic solipsism ‘Change of Heart’, all these and more undercoring her much publicised vocal missteps at last year’s Glastonbury as nowt more than the effects of bad sound monitors, as was claimed at the time. Musically, she brought the goods.
She bought more than her fair share of the goods when it came to her between-songs vocals, regaling her audience with stories of the backgrounds behind certain songs and tales of earlier times in general. Much of it I did indeed find entertaining and enlightening, but I ultimately thought she dragged out certain recollections beyond what I’d consider acceptable for something touted as a musical event. A case of too much of a good thing having a negative effect on the highlighted good thing, evident by Cyndi’s acknowledgment that she forgot to perform a song on her setlist. If she ever wanted to do a talk tour, she certainly has a wealth of material for such!
Her costume changes better gelled with proceedings, and despite Ms Lauper claiming to indulge in such to please “the gays”, my non-gay self enjoyed the spectacle, though not always for the intended reasons: sure, Cyndi nailed shoulder-padded power jackets and polka-dotted Yayoi Kusama pieces, but the half-arsed Big Bird cosplay was just baffling.
Speaking of the rainbow folk, Lauper literally, and vocally, waved the flag for them during ‘True Colors’, a song which was probably ahead of its time with its implicit appeal to solidarity and allyship. Nowt too objectionable until she made mention of the recently re-elected Trump administration “taking diversity out of the books”, one of several eyeroll-inducing statements; others centred on her advocacy for reproductive rights, with her asserting that women should hold the same autonomy over their own bodies as men, which is reasonable enough if you forget that ritual male-infant circumcision and mandatory child support are, respectively, legal and enforced (I’d tell you to ask Walter Scott about the bodily-autonomy implications of the latter were he still breathing). Once again, Cyndi worked her groan-worthy “Girls just want to have fun-damental rights” slogan into her closing performance of ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Abor–, I Mean Fun’, demonstrating that gender solipsism is an unmistakable symptom of even the mildest forms of Trump Derangment Syndrome.
All that said, my dislike of Cyndi remains elusive; for all her culture-war cataracts (and democravenglism, small- and capital-d), her heart’s in the right place, and her brand of activism remains refreshingly free of the venom one sees elsewhere. One just wishes it was a) better informed and b) better integrated, along with her between-song banter, into what had been primarily billed as a musical event. In any case, Cyndi and her endearing Italian-American New York pluck make the low points easier to weather, as did the surprise appearance of Culture Club’s Boy George, who provided vocal assistance for the aforementioned closing number.
Furthermore, her closing words of “Seeya next chapter, guys!” suggest that her “farewell tour” may not *quite* be the last word, or note, we hear of her.
~MRDA~
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