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Telegraph
12-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Cyndi Lauper: A chaotically fun farewell – but not enough hits to sustain an arena tour
'As I've said before, if I was going out, I was going out big,' said As multicoloured confetti rained down, Lauper deployed her signature dance move – legs apart, knees in, Elvis hips, wild robotic arms – and played the recorder before plugging her Lauper and her great 1980s rival Madonna shared the brassy ambition that seems to be in the DNA of East Coast female pop stars from Catholic families of Italian descent (see also Lady Gaga). They're whirlwinds of energy and invention, all three. But Lauper always had more of an art school sensibility than When a young Lauper fled her family home to escape an abusive stepfather, one of the few possessions she took with her was a copy of Yoko Ono's book of drawings and instructions, Grapefruit. This sensibility was reflected in the show through polka dot costumes designed by Yayoi Kusama, the 95-year-old conceptual artist, and a general air of haphazardness (a dodgy spotlight and Lauper leaving out a song by mistake). But what was missing here – sadly – were hits. Lauper only ever had three top 10 singles in the UK (eight in the US), and it showed. Songs were interspersed with long monologues that took in everything from men with comb-overs to Banksy. Lauper's farewell tour is her first arena tour since 1986 and, even so, it was noticeable that the entire top tier of seats at the O2 were curtained off. If this wasn't an 'adieu', I wonder whether such big venues would have been booked. (Her performance at last year's Glastonbury certainly wasn't met with universal acclaim.) Still, the hits were rapturously received. I Drove All Night throbbed with neon-gothic propulsion, Lauper deploying its octave-spanning vocal gymnastics with aplomb. The highlight was Time After Time, her delicate 1984 ballad with wonderfully elastic bassline. There were moments of theatrical kitsch, such as when Lauper appeared in a flamboyant red and yellow costume through a trapdoor. You were reminded that Lauper yoked her early stardom to WWF professional wrestling, a curious partnership for a second-wave feminist to forge. But her manufactured feud with 'sexist' male wrestlers ended up in a televised fight, via proxy female wrestlers. Lauper's team won and the bout broke MTV viewing records. She was a canny marketeer. Inclusive anthem True Colours contained a dig at President Trump ('You can write diversity out of the books but you can't write it out of who we are,' she said). For the finale of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun she was joined by Boy George. Two 1980s icon for the price of one. The stage looked like a Smash Hits spread from 1984. The duet was a qualified success – I did wonder if the bewildered-looking George had ever heard the song at one point – but it was a suitably colourful end to Lauper's warmly chaotic victory lap. Until Feb 16. Tickets:
Yahoo
12-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Cyndi Lauper live at The O2 review: fun, barely-contained mayhem
Last summer, Lauper drew a huge crowd at Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage, but gave a rocky and uneven performance in a show beset with technical difficulties. When her vocals weren't drowned out entirely by the cranked-up bass, she often lagged behind the band, possibly due to issues with her in-ear monitors, and by the end, she appeared frustrated with the production team. It was far from a triumphant victory lap, and ahead of her first (and last) arena tour since 1987, the new wave star had a lot to prove. Fortunately, she sounded far better last night at The O2. Lauper still has pipes after all, it turns out: unleashing an operatic quaver for her cover of Prince's When You Were Mine, and belting out the high notes of I Drove All Night to huge cheers while her floaty white skirt served as a projector for images of cars and streaming headlights. 'And I still can't parallel park,' she quipped afterwards. Lit by the crowd's phone torches, Time After Time finally got the rendition it really deserved, too. Lauper also invited surprise guest Boy George on for her joyous closer Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. Conceptually, Lauper explained, the Farewell Tour is intended as a piece of living art: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun featured visuals by the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama (and a dot-covered costume for Lauper) while True Colours was accompanied by a version of Daniel Wurtzel's installation art piece Air Fountain. 'If I'm going out, I'm going out big,' she reasoned, on her distinctive Queens drawl. 'I've never been a church mouse anyway.' So far, so slick? There was still plenty of chaos along the way: opener She Bop featured Lauper performing a slightly honking recorder solo, and ahead of a cover of Mardi Gras song Iko Iko, she clambered out of a trapdoor in a frill-covered dress by designer Christian Siriano, accessorised with a washboard chest-plate. 'The gays want glamour!' she declared, quoting Siriano. There was also no reining in Lauper's love of a meandering, slightly excessive story. Earlier iterations of the tour's setlist featured a cover of Wanda Jackson's Funnel of Love, but last night Lauper got too carried away with one of her winding tales. 'Holy cow! I forgot to do a song!' she exclaimed. Not even this could halt her monologuing though; within minutes she moved straight onto romanticising houses covered with asbestos ('I always used to think that the shingles looked like Good & Plenty [sweets]') For most other artists, this could easily be a total trainwreck, but Lauper's too charismatic for that. Though far from polished, it was hard to resist the charm of her sweary Queens drawl, and in the end, the undercurrent of barely-contained mayhem felt like an integral part of the fun.
