Part of the reason for The Beatles’ enduring appeal and success is their seemingly limitless power of inspiration. Artists from every genre, across every country or decade, call upon the Liverpool four as idols. Even the most outright pop artists in the neon maximalism of the 1980s were influenced by the band, as Cyndi Lauper admits that the Fab Four changed her life.
The Beatles and Lauper are two names never expected to sit in the same sentence. Their music couldn’t be further apart, sitting on two different sides of the mainstream music spectrum. Lauper is perhaps the ultimate 1980s star as her timeless hit ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ stands out as a karaoke essential and bubblegum-pop masterpiece.
Unlike The Beatles, who got weirder and more experimental with each release, Lauper’s 40-year career only ever seemed to carry her deeper into the heart of mainstream culture. She started as an MTV darling, and her debut album, She’s So Unusual, made her the first female artist to have four top-five hits at once. Moving into film soundtracks, her work for The Goonies and on the Broadway soundtrack for Kinky Boots made her a stage and screen legend. With countless hits like ‘True Colours’, ‘Time After Time’ and ‘Change Of Heart’, Lauper is the epitome of a pop star.
But at the very start of her interest in music, long before the world knew her name, Lauper credits The Beatles for being the catalyst that changed her life. Initially, her musical knowledge was incredibly limited. She told Pitchfork, “My mother had a beautiful voice. She played a lot of Italian music. She played Puccini.”
And while an education in more classical music can be a worthy thing, it wasn’t until she discovered The Beatles that Lauper realised music was something she could or wanted to do. “My sister Ellen and I didn’t know there would be anything that would be called ‘our music’ until we saw The Beatles on Ed Sullivan,” she remembered. “It’s when my life changed. We would dress up like The Beatles for our family and perform with mops. By singing with my sister like that, and listening to John’s voice, I learned harmony and the structure of songs.”
Especially highlighting Meet The Beatles as the album that got her hooked on the band; the 1964 record was their first American hit. The record instantly stole the number one slot in the charts, only being usurped after 11 weeks when the same band shared their next US release.
The way The Beatles changed music is well documented. Standing out as a piece of a larger cultural shift, the entire world was shifting in the 1960s. The concept of a teenager suddenly emerged, as increasing gender equality and the emergence of contraception and counterculture meant that kids didn’t immediately have to become adults; they could have fun for a while. In the post-war years, a new generation suddenly seemed to appear and demanded to be set apart from their parents. Lauper remembers it well, adding, “At 10, the radio changed. It was the divide between my mother’s ears and mine.”
The Supremes stood out as another piece of this moving puzzle, “All of a sudden, there were groups,” Lauper added. “The Supremes, they were just kids — if you were a little kid, you listened to that and all of a sudden you’re singing with them. I always felt they were singing to me. I was like, ‘Baby Love? Oh yeah, I get that!’”
Teaching the young singer that she could have a place in music and getting her excited about the sound of her generation, The Beatles could be to thank for Cyndi Lauper’s tremendous career.
