How Charley Keller helped me appreciate Cyndi Lauper

Here is a link to the video, as I can't embed from my phone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwxTBdJo_ow&feature=youtube_gdata

I was planting trees in my back yard with a friend, Charley Keller a few years ago and we got talking about great guitar riffs, the ones that as soon as you heard it, most anyone could recognize what the title of the song was. Charley was a nice kid, super innocent, and a huge fan of Neutral Milk Hotel, Joanna Newsome, and Apples in Stereo. I would tease Charley    Incessantly about his favorite bands, usually taking the devils advocate role purely for my own amusement. Charley would often be met for work in the morning with me telling him that Jeff Mangum's lyrics were self indulgent trash or that Mike Loves lyrics were the real key to the Beach Boys success not Brian Wilsons orchestral arrangement of their surf ballads. None of what I said did I believe, but I just savor a good debate on pop music. During our discussion of great guitar riffs we bounced around some obvious choices, Smells Like Teen Spirit, China Grove, La Grange, Should I Stay or Should I Go, and every Rolking Stones Song ever. Just to be funny I threw out Cyndi Laupers 1984 hit "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun", and Charley dismissed it immediately as mindless pop. Ignoring his point, I merely argued that upon hearing even a few seconds of that song, even a periferal music fan could identify the title with the riff. Like name that Tune. Just because it was top forty music did not change that. He relented and we went about our day working in my yard.

For the duration of my work day, "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" played on my mind, and I ruminated over the pop world in 1984. I was hardly a Cyndi sycophant because Lauper's fandom was virtually all young women and being in that crowd would have meant I was either gay or impotent. Lauper was a Lilith Fair artist, before it ever happened. 

I got home at the end of the day and played that iconic music video on YouTube. I listened to the words for maybe the very first time, and they struck me;
"some guys take a beautiful girl and hide them away from the rest of the world, I want to be the one that walks in the sun"
I was stunned. I thought it was about, partying, shopping, sleepovers and boys, but rather it was a young woman's Declaration of Independence. 

In 1984, America was amidst Reagan's cultural war, denying diversity, and using intellectual henchman like Seymour Hirsch, (and his war for Cultural Literacy) to push conformity amongst all Americans. Reagan tried to co-opt anything good, or what he deemed wholesome as traditional, American (Republican) culture, which would is why he tried to use Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the Usa", a anti-government, anti patriotism anthem as a campaign song. It was great folly as the song actually depicts the failure of Reagan's regime to protect it's own. Lauper's music was not promoting Reagan's homogenous culture, either. Her songs of that album, depicted true feelings of a young, independent women, totally free from the restraints of male dependency, and free from being depicted as a sexual being foremost. (See "She Bop")
 In 1984, there was only two new Female artists to finish in the top 100 album sales for that year, Lauper, and Madonna. Madonna, went the other direction completely. She famously wore the belt buckle with "Boy Toy" emblazoned on it. She was all sex, she was playing the slut. Unlike Lauper, her music was not independently created, as she was maligned for much of the year as being a creation of super producer Nile Rodgers, formerly of Chic. She had many male fans, many of which wanted to align themselves with the whorish Madonna-ites, rather than the oddly dressed, close-legged, Lauper fans.

In "Girls", Lauper took the misogonystic song, originally written by Robert Hazard, about a women pleasing a man, and twisted it into an anthem of self determination. Her reworked lyrics, the unusual, and self directed fashion sense depicted on the music video became an iconic moment for young women in the 1980's.  
In 1984, Lauper appeared on the cover of Time and Newsweek, in their profile of Women in Rock. She also took home
One of Ms Magazine's Women of the Year honors, for her "defiant joy and displaying of our strength", and noted that Lauper consistently honored her mother and "Girls" might well have been a response to her mothers life as a talented woman, sacrificing career for the shadows of a husband( who left her) and family responsibilities.  
Since that time, Lauper has worked extensively with non profit organizations, mostly aligned with women's rights, and gay and lesbian rights, and had been honored by FLAGG and most recently, by the City of New York Feminist Press, for her lifetime of work for the cause.

The lyrics:

I come home in the morning light
My mother says when you gonna live your life right
Oh mother dear we're not the fortunate ones
And girls they want to have fun
Oh girls just want to have fun

The phone rings in the middle of the night
My father yells what you gonna do with your life
Oh daddy dear you know you're still number one
But girls they want to have fun
Oh girls just want to have -

That's all they really want
Some fun
When the working day is done
Girls - they want to have fun
Oh girls just want to have fun

Some boys take a beautiful girl
And hide her away from the rest of the world
I want to be the one to walk in the sun
Oh girls they want to have fun
Oh girls just want to have

That's all they really want
Some fun
When the working day is done
Girls - they want to have fun
Oh girls just want to have fun
They want to have fun
They want to have fun