Cyndi Lauper — A Biography

1953 Cyndi Lauper (full name: Cynthia Ann Stephanie Lauper Thornton) was born on June 22nd, 1953, in Brooklyn, New York, though she grew up mostly in Ozone Park, Queens. A lot of biographies get the date wrong, but this is the correct one. Her father was Fred Lauper, her mother Catrine Dominique (who you can spot in several of Cyndi’s videos over the years), her sister Elen Lauper (now an acupuncturist living in Southern California), and her brother Fred, who everyone calls Dutch. Cyndi’s childhood wasn’t easy. Her parents split up when she was young, and her mother remarried a man who was abusive… something Cyndi would open up about publicly much later in her 2012 memoir. She found her escape in music. She picked up the guitar and started writing lyrics at twelve years old. The first song she ever learned to play was “Greensleeves.” She bounced around four different high schools before eventually dropping out, though Richmond Hill High School in Queens later gave her an honorary diploma.

1977 Through the mid-seventies, Cyndi hustled as a vocalist with various cover bands around the New York metropolitan area. She sang songs by Jefferson Airplane, Led Zeppelin, Bad Company, and a bunch of top 40 stuff… anything to pay the bills. The bands had names like “Doc West” and “Flyer.” None of them went anywhere, and in 1977 things got worse: Cyndi badly damaged her vocal cords, leaving her almost completely voiceless.

1980 After a full year of vocal therapy with coach Katie Agestra, Cyndi’s voice came back. If anything, it came back stronger and more controlled than before. She teamed up with multi-instrumentalist John Turi to form a new band called Blue Angel, which put out a self-titled debut album in 1980. The record had some real gems, including “Maybe He’ll Know” and a gorgeous rendition of Gene Pitney’s “I’m Gonna Be Strong.” It didn’t sell well, though, and the band eventually fell apart. Cyndi ended up filing for bankruptcy. She went back to working odd jobs (retail, waitressing) while singing in clubs at night and slowly rebuilding.

1983 Cyndi signed with Portrait Records as a solo artist in the spring of 1983. Her first solo album, She’s So Unusual, was released at the end of the year and went on to sell more than 4.5 million copies in the United States alone. Moreover the album was the first of a female artist to score four Top Five singles from a debut album: “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” “Time After Time,” “She Bop,” and “All Through the Night.” Recognition soon followed: • American Music Awards for Favorite Female Vocalist Pop/Rock • American Music Awards for Favorite Female Vocalist Video Pop/Rock • a Grammy award for Best New Artist • Rolling Stone Best New Artist and Best Female Video Artist • MTV Best Female Video Artist • … and many others

With her thrift-store fashion, wild hair, thick Queens accent, and a personality that didn’t fit into any box the music industry had ready for her, Cyndi stood out. She wasn’t polished. She wasn’t trying to be. And people loved her for it.

1984 In 1984, Cyndi worked 350 days and neared her 300th concert mark. She performed or promoted her records in 150 cities. But she also found time to sit down and design all the T-shirts sold at her concerts.

1985 In 1985, Cyndi contributed her writing and singing talents to the movie The Goonies. She provided the theme song “(The Goonies ‘R’) Good Enough.” It became a top 10 hit. She also appeared on the covers of Rolling Stone, Time, and Newsweek that year and was featured twice on the cover of People. She was named a Ms. Magazine Woman of the Year. That same year she took part in the recording of “We Are the World” alongside dozens of the biggest names in the business.

1986 In ’86 True Colors was launched, the cast of this album including notables such as Billy Joel, Nile Rodgers, Rick Derringer, Aimee Mann, and The Bangles. The title track “True Colors” hit No. 1 and, over the years, took on a life of its own… it became something of an anthem for the LGBTQ community and really for anyone going through hard times. Cyndi received a Grammy nomination for the single. She co-produced the album, which was a big deal at a time when few women were given that kind of control in the studio.

1988 In October 1988, Cyndi travelled to the Soviet Union as one of a group of American songwriters collaborating with Soviet counterparts. The outcome was “Cold Sky,” found on the album Music Speaks Louder Than Words. Also in 1988, Cyndi made her motion picture debut in Vibes. She co-starred with Jeff Goldblum and they both played psychics. Even though most fans love this movie, it was panned by the critics. It’s got a cult following that won’t quit.

1989 In 1989, Cyndi recorded the album A Night to Remember, with some songs re-released on a single in January 1990. She again received a Grammy nomination, this time for “I Drove All Night.” Hit records, award-winning videos, sold-out tours, performances during mega-events like Roger Waters’ The Wall in Berlin… the rest, to use Lauper’s expression, is “herstory.”

1990 Cyndi filmed her second movie, Off and Running. She met her husband David Thornton on the set.

1991 She got married to actor David Thornton on November 24th, 1991, at the Friends Meeting House in New York. Little Richard led the couple in the recitation of their non-traditional vows, and Patti LaBelle sang the wedding theme “Come What May.”

1993 Cyndi’s fourth album is Hat Full of Stars. It’s maybe her most critically acclaimed record to date: • The Village Voice said it was “startlingly wonderful. The singing is stellar, the arrangements are happening.” • Rolling Stone gave the album 3½ stars and said her voice had never sounded better. • The New York Times praised the new songs and said “the new Cyndi Lauper still embraces the old one.” • The Los Angeles Times called it her most “consistently tuneful and ambitious album.”

When talking about this album Cyndi says: “I wanted to make the album I always needed to make. I had to say the things I never could.” In addition to co-producing and co-writing, Cyndi also directed three of its videos, making her one of very few artist/directors in the pop world at the time. Commercially, though, the album didn’t do what it deserved. It needed a bigger audience.

1994 In 1994, Cyndi released Twelve Deadly Cyns… And Then Some. This greatest-hits compilation was released worldwide in 1994 but didn’t hit the U.S. until July 1995. Cyndi also made her first appearance on the sitcom Mad About You. She was nominated for an Emmy but didn’t win. Not yet.

1995 Cyndi made her second appearance on Mad About You. Again, she was nominated for an Emmy. This time, she won… Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series.

1996–1997 Sisters of Avalon was released in Japan in 1996, then worldwide in 1997. For the first time, Cyndi had a hand in writing every single song on the album. Keyboardist Jan Pulsford co-wrote 11 of the tracks with her… they are now “Sisters of Avalon.” Around the same time, Cyndi got pregnant with her first child, a boy. She announced it on Fox After Breakfast on April 28th, 1997: “I’m in my eleventh week and I know I’m having a football player or model. I feel like this kid should be in college by now, it’s taking so long.” Even while pregnant, she hit the road as special guest on Tina Turner’s “Wildest Dreams” tour for 3 months. Declyn Wallace Thornton Lauper was born on November 19th, 1997.

1998–1999 Cyndi worked on a sitcom which unfortunately never got picked up. In October 1998 she released a Christmas album… her last record with Sony. In 1999, she appeared twice more on Mad About You, did a U.S. tour as Cher’s special guest, and saw “Disco Inferno” become a hit in American clubs during the summer. She also filmed The Opportunists with Christopher Walken. It was Cyndi’s first dramatic role in a movie.

2000–2002 The Opportunists got a limited release and Cyndi earned solid reviews for her acting. A new album called Shine was supposed to come out through Edel, but the label went under and the 12-track album never saw the light of day… that is, until it leaked onto the internet. In 2002, Cyndi joined Cher on tour again and got excellent reviews. She also released a 5-track EP containing some of the Shine songs. It did well. She did several in-store signings and kept the connection with fans alive.

2003–2004 She continued her solo tour. In November 2003, the At Last album came out, a collection of classic covers. She was the headline singer performing in Times Square for New Year’s Eve 2003–2004. In April, she performed at the VH1 Divas Show. The Shine album finally got a proper release, but only in Japan. Her first live DVD, Live… At Last, came out in May. She played a ton of concerts in the U.S., Canada, and Japan, returned to Australia for the first time since 1989, and spent half a month performing at the Night of the Proms in Holland. She was nominated for a Grammy.

2005–2006 Cyndi participated in the Stay Close PFLAG campaign with her sister Elen, advocating for families with LGBTQ members. She appeared on various TV shows and performed concerts across North America. In 2006, she released The Body Acoustic, an album of reimagined acoustic versions of her classic songs with guest collaborators.

2007 Cyndi spent most of the year working on a new album that kept getting pushed back. In June she launched the True Colors Tour across North America… a concert event focused on LGBTQ rights and visibility that brought together multiple artists. After 12 years away, she went back to São Paulo, Brazil and Buenos Aires, Argentina for a small run of shows in South America.

2008 The long-awaited album Bring Ya to the Brink finally dropped on May 26th. It was a dance-pop record, and a worldwide tour followed. That same year, she co-founded the True Colors Fund (later renamed True Colors United), a nonprofit dedicated to ending homelessness among LGBTQ youth. She also appeared in a movie called Here and There with her husband David Thornton.

2009 The planned North American True Colors Tour got cancelled due to the economy. Cyndi participated in an H&M AIDS awareness campaign entitled “Girls Just Want to Have Sex” and toured through Europe. She also appeared on the TV crime show Bones as the psychic Avalon Harmonia… a role she’d come back to several times over the next few years.

2010 Cyndi appeared on CBS’s The Celebrity Apprentice. But the real story of 2010 was Memphis Blues, a proper blues album recorded in Memphis. It turned out to be Billboard’s most successful blues album of the year, sitting at No. 1 on the Billboard Blues Albums chart for 13 straight weeks. Nobody saw that coming. Cyndi also joined Lady Gaga in a MAC Cosmetics campaign to raise awareness about women living with HIV/AIDS, and she was named Queen of Toronto’s Pride Parade that summer.

2011 In March, Cyndi made international news with an impromptu performance of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” while stuck waiting for a delayed flight in Buenos Aires. Somebody posted the video to YouTube and it blew up. That November, she released two holiday singles on iTunes: a blues-flavored cover of Elvis Presley’s “Blue Christmas” and a duet with Norah Jones on “Home for the Holidays.”

2012 Big year. In June, Cyndi returned to WWE for the first time in 27 years, appearing to promote Raw’s 1,000th episode in memory of her old friend “Captain” Lou Albano. In September, she performed at fashion designer Betsey Johnson’s 40-year retrospective show. She also published her memoir, Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir, which became a New York Times bestseller. She wrote openly about childhood abuse, depression, and the winding road of her career. And then the thing that would define her next chapter: Cyndi composed the music and lyrics for the Broadway musical Kinky Boots, with Harvey Fierstein writing the book. It was based on the 2005 British film of the same name, and it debuted in Chicago in October before heading to Broadway.

2013 Kinky Boots opened on Broadway at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre on April 4th. It led the 2013 Tony Awards with 13 nominations and took home six, including Best Musical. Cyndi won the Tony for Best Original Score, becoming the first woman to win that category on her own. The show tells the story of a struggling shoe factory saved by an unlikely partnership with a drag queen performer, and Cyndi’s songs made the whole thing work. In the summer, she celebrated the 30th anniversary of She’s So Unusual by touring the full album through the U.S. and Australia.

2014 Cyndi won the Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album for the Kinky Boots cast recording. She guest-starred on 36 dates of Cher’s Dressed to Kill Tour. She also released a remastered 30th anniversary edition of She’s So Unusual with bonus demos, live recordings, and new remixes. Her annual “Home for the Holidays” benefit concert for homeless LGBTQ youth, now in its fourth year, featured performers including 50 Cent and Laverne Cox. 100% of the net proceeds went to True Colors United.

2015 Cyndi was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Kinky Boots opened on London’s West End at the Adelphi Theatre. She also returned to Bones as Avalon Harmonia and went public about her own battle with psoriasis, partnering with Novartis and the National Psoriasis Foundation. She appeared on The Today Show to discuss it. Around this time, she mentioned working on a country album with producer Tony Brown.

2016 Detour, that country album, came out. It featured duets with Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Vince Gill, Jewel, and Alison Krauss. It peaked at No. 29 on the Billboard 200 and cracked the Top 5 on Billboard’s Country Albums chart. A Cyndi Lauper country record? Yeah, she pulled it off. The West End production of Kinky Boots also won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical.

2017–2018 Cyndi continued performing and doing advocacy work. In 2018, she brought the house down at the Kennedy Center Honors celebration for Cher. She received Billboard’s Women in Music ICON Award and launched a sold-out Home Décor Collection with Grandin Road. She was also working on a second musical with Rob Hyman (of the Hooters)… an adaptation of the 1988 film Working Girl. The development process on that one would take years.

2019 Kinky Boots ended its Broadway run on April 7th, after six years and over 2,500 performances. It grossed $297 million… the 25th longest-running Broadway musical in history. Cyndi received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Northern Vermont University. In December, the United Nations presented her with their first-ever High Note Global Prize, an award recognizing artists who use their platforms to fight for social justice.

2020–2021 The pandemic shut everything down. No touring, no live shows. Cyndi kept working on the Working Girl musical during this stretch and continued her advocacy around LGBTQ youth homelessness through True Colors United.

2022 Cyndi established the “Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights” Fund to support women’s reproductive health and voting initiatives, following the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The slogan, borrowed from her most famous song, became a popular protest chant… notably at the 2017 Women’s March and again during 2022 protests. Her music video for “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” joined the YouTube Billion Views Club. She was present at the White House when President Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act. Her nonprofit was officially rebranded from the True Colors Fund to True Colors United. She also received an honorary Doctor of Letters from Northern Vermont University.

2023 Let the Canary Sing, a feature-length documentary about Cyndi’s life and career directed by Alison Ellwood, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in June. She also took on the role of Ruthie in the dark comedy horror series The Horror of Dolores Roach and contributed the song “Oh Dolores” for the show.

2024 In June, Cyndi announced she planned to retire from touring. The “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Farewell Tour” launched in October in Montreal and went across the United States… Boston, Houston, San Diego, and a lot more. The documentary Let the Canary Sing was released on Paramount+ in June. The tour got great write-ups. The New York Times said Lauper is “still lastingly — thrillingly — a renegade.” Critics noted her vocal power was very much intact and praised the visual side of the show, which featured original art collaborations with Yayoi Kusama, Daniel Wurtzel, and fashion designers Christian Siriano and Geoffrey Mac.

2025 The farewell tour continued internationally through the U.K., Europe, Australia, and Japan. One of the biggest highlights: her first-ever sold-out headlining show at Madison Square Garden. She talked about it in a Billboard interview: “To finally be the headliner and not the maid of honor or the freakin’ bridesmaid? It was pretty good.” Surprise guests along the way included Chaka Khan, Sam Smith, Hayley Williams, and Avril Lavigne. The final North American leg kicked off in July with 25 dates, wrapping with two nights at the Hollywood Bowl on August 29th and 30th. CBS aired A Grammy Salute to Cyndi Lauper: Live From The Hollywood Bowl, featuring Cher, Joni Mitchell, SZA, John Legend, and others. In April, Cyndi was announced as a 2025 inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The ceremony was in November in Los Angeles, where she performed “True Colors,” “Time After Time” with Raye, and “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” joined by Avril Lavigne and Salt-N-Pepa. Gina Schock from the Go-Go’s played drums. Also that fall, her second musical, Working Girl — book by Theresa Rebeck, direction by Christopher Ashley — had its world premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, with singer JoJo starring as Tess McGill. Rolling Stone called it “thrilling” and noted “standout performances.”

2026 Even after the farewell tour ended, Cyndi wasn’t quite done. She announced her first-ever Las Vegas residency: Cyndi Lauper: Live in Las Vegas, five nights from April 24th through May 2nd at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace. She’s calling it “Cyn City.” Reviews from the first shows praised the storytelling between songs, her humor, and the fact that her voice… the one she nearly lost back in 1977… is still there.

Over a career spanning more than four decades, Cyndi Lauper has sold over 50 million records worldwide. She’s won a Grammy, an Emmy, and a Tony… one of only a handful of performers to pull that off. She’s been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Artists from Lady Gaga to Katy Perry to Kim Petras have cited her as an influence. And through her work with True Colors United, her advocacy for women’s rights, and her general refusal to shut up about things that matter, she’s done a lot more than make hit records. She’s still going. She’s still loud. And she’s still Cyndi.