Cyndi Lauper, singer-songwriter

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 6 April 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Cyndi Lauper is a multi-award winning singer and songwriter. She has sold more than fifty million records, won an Emmy for acting and her musical Kinky Boots earned her a Tony and an Oliver award.

Born in 1953, Cyndi grew up in a blue collar neighbourhood in New York. Her mother loved music and art and took her children to free exhibitions in New York which inspired Cyndi. As a very young girl, Cyndi listened to her mother’s extensive record collection and mimicked the voices she heard from musicals and operas.

After a difficult family home life due to her mother’s turbulent marriages, Cyndi found solace in music and began writing songs when she was ten.

She left home at seventeen determined to make it in the music industry. She started out as a singer in bands, whilst supporting herself doing a series of jobs. Early in her career, she lost her voice for almost a year after trying to make herself heard over amps which were too loud. Success eventually came when she released her debut solo album She’s So Unusual in 1983 – the first album by a female artist to spawn four consecutive US Top 5 singles.

Cyndi lives in New York with her husband, David who is an actor. They met on a set of a film and rock legend Little Richard officiated their wedding.

DISC ONE: Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. Composed by Claude Debussy and performed by The Orchestre National de Lyon DISC TWO: All That Meat and No Potatoes - Louis Armstrong And His All-Stars DISC THREE: Puccini, “Un bel di, vedremo” (“One fine day, we shall see”) from Act II of Madame Butterfly. Performed by Maria Callas with Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala di Milano, conducted by Herbert von Karajan DISC FOUR: Getting to Know You - Marni Nixon DISC FIVE: I Want Hold Your Hand - The Beatles DISC SIX: A Sailboat in the Moonlight - Billie Holiday And Her Orchestra DISC SEVEN: One Way or Another - Blondie DISC EIGHT: Hound Dog - Big Mama Thornton

BOOK CHOICE: Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris LUXURY ITEM: A luxury hotel CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Puccini, “Un bel di, vedremo” (“One fine day, we shall see”) from Act II of Madame Butterfly. Performed by Maria Callas with Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala di Milano, conducted by Herbert von Karajan

Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Sarah Taylor

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast, but this is about something else you might enjoy.
0:05.4	My name's Katie Lecky and I'm an assistant commissioner for on demand music on BBC Sounds.
0:10.8	The BBC has an incredible musical heritage and culture and as a music lover, I love being part of that.
0:17.5	With music on sounds, we offer collections and mixes for everything, from workouts to
0:22.4	helping you nod off, boogie in your kitchen, or even just a moment of calm. And they're all put
0:28.3	together by people who know their stuff. So if you want some expertly curated music in your life,
0:35.0	check out BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:41.3	Hello, I'm Lauren Levern and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast.
0:45.3	Every week I ask my guest to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them
0:50.3	if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:53.3	And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast.
0:58.1	I hope you enjoy listening.
1:26.6	I hope you enjoy listening. My castaway this week is the singer, songwriter and activist Cindy Lopa. She burst onto the scene in 1983 with her album, She's So Unusual, and she really was
1:32.3	an explosion of colour and joy with a look and sound that were equal parts, spirit and skill.
1:38.3	Her dressing-up box aesthetic inspired a million lookalikes.
1:41.3	Her own inspirations were more esoteric.
1:43.3	She draped herself in
1:44.8	thrift store petticoats, pasted Van Gogh's starry night to the soles of her high-heeled
1:49.2	shoes, recruited Annie Liebervitz to shoot the album cover and insisted that the instrumentation
1:54.9	on the record's centrepiece, girls just want to have fun, should evoke the Coney Island
1:59.2	fairground she'd grown up visiting.
2:01.7	The exuberant catchiness of that track and the soaring success of those that followed
	...

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