She's So Unusual

In 1978, Lauper met saxophonist John Turi and formed the band Blue Angel. They recorded a demo tape of original music. Steve Massarsky heard the tape and liked Lauper's voice. He bought out Blue Angel's contract for $5,000 and became their manager.

Lauper received many offers to go solo, but rebuffed any offer that did not include the rest of the band. Blue Angel was eventually signed by Polydor Records through which they released the album Blue Angel in 1980. Despite some positive critical attention, the album was a commercial failure. The members of Blue Angel also had a falling-out with Massarsky and fired him as their manager. He later filed an $80,000 suit against them, which forced Lauper into bankruptcy.^[9]

After Blue Angel broke up, Lauper spent time working in retail stores and singing in local clubs. In 1981, while singing in a local New York bar, Lauper met David Wolff, who took over as her manager. With his help, Lauper signed with Portrait Records, a subsidiary of Epic Records, in the spring of 1983 and soon began recording her first solo album.^[16]

The front cover of She's So Unusual was photographed on Henderson Walk in Coney Island, New York in the summer of 1983 by Annie Leibovitz. Lauper is depicted wearing a vintage red prom-style dress that she purchased at the vintage clothing shop where she used to work, Screaming Mimi's. She is also seen holding a bouquet of flowers which were purchased from a vendor on the boardwalk at the time of the shoot. Lauper has heavy costume jewelry on her ears, arms, neck and right ankle. She is barefoot, with the exception of the fishnet stockings, and her red high-heels appear to have been taken off in front of her as they lay on their sides at the bottom of the photo. The cover shot was captured in front of the wax museum, The World in Wax Musee. It can be seen behind Lauper that the museum had been closed for some time and at the time of closure was featuring a wax statue of Puerto Rican professional baseball player Roberto Clemente. The wooden awning above the doorway with the two blue panels read the name of the museum. The first panel read "The World" and second panel read "In Wax". This was airbrushed out of the photograph.^[17]

The cover won Janet Perr the Grammy Award for Best Recording Package in 1985.^[18]

The lead single from the album was "Girls Just Want to Have Fun", released on October 17, 1983. The single achieved massive success in the United States with its music video playing in heavy rotation on several stations, and eventually peaking at number two on the Billboard Hot 100. It received Platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sales of 2,000,000 copies.^[19] The single was a success internationally, reaching the top ten in 19 countries and number one in 10 countries, including; Australia, Canada, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Brazil and Norway. "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" received nominations at the 1985 Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, and won Best Female Video at the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards, among several nominations. In the year end Top 100 of 1984 in New Zealand, the single was included on the top spots.

"Time After Time" was the second single released from the album, and was released in March 1984. It repeated the success of the previous single and spent two consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Lauper's first number one hit on the Hot 100 and eventually spending a total of 20 weeks on the chart and receiving Gold certification from the RIAA for 1,000,000 copies sold.^[19] Like the previous single, "Time After Time" was an international success and reached the top ten in 15 countries. The song received a Grammy nomination for Song of the Year. In the year end Top 100 of 1984 in New Zealand, the single was included on the top spots.

The third single from the album was "She Bop", released on July 2, 1984. The song reached number three on the Hot 100, becoming her third consecutive top five hit, and spent a total of 18 weeks on the chart. With sales of over 1,000,000 copies, the song was certified Gold by the RIAA. The single proved to be another international success for Lauper, reaching the top ten in 8 countries. "She Bop" was controversial upon release and placed at number 15 on the PMRC's "Filthy Fifteen".^[20]

"All Through the Night" was single number four, released in September 1984. Like Lauper's previous three singles, "All Through the Night" reached the top five of the Hot 100 with a peak of number five. It was written by, and originally recorded by Jules Shear, who provided backing vocals as well. The song was a moderate international success, reaching the top ten in 6 countries, and received Gold certification in Canada.^[21] In the year end Top 100 of 1985 in New Zealand, the single was included on the list.

Single number five was "Money Changes Everything", released in December 1984. It was a moderate success and reached number 27 on the Hot 100, Lauper's first single to not reach the top ten. It also did moderately well in Australia, reaching number 19 on its chart.

The sixth and final single from the album was a cover of the Prince song, "When You Were Mine", released on January 31, 1985, in Canada and Japan only. It achieved little success, reaching number 62 on the Canadian Singles Chart.

More information Review scores, Source ...

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[4]
Christgau's Record Guide	A[22]
Classic Pop	[23]
Los Angeles Times	[24]
Pitchfork	8.0/10[25]
Record Collector	[26]
Rolling Stone	[27]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[28]
Slant Magazine	[2]
Spin Alternative Record Guide	9/10[29]

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In a contemporary review for Rolling Stone, Kurt Loder highlighted Lauper's "wild and wonderful skyrocket of a voice", which he felt recalled the "long-gone golden age" of "pre-Beatles girl-group pop", and lauded She's So Unusual as a progression from her work in Blue Angel: "Here, boosted by a powerful, synth-based band, Lauper turns away from nouveau trash and trains her talent on some really first-rate material."^[27] Robert Christgau gave qualified praise in The Village Voice, complimenting Lauper for covering "two of the sharpest pop songs of the past five years" in "Money Changes Everything" and "When You Were Mine", while finding her "Betty Boop voice" less effective over a full album;^[30] however, he would later pen a glowing reappraisal of the record, conceding that "if a kook who's loved, respected, and taken seriously by her sisters fools boys into believing she can be fooled with, more power to her."^[22] She's So Unusual was voted the eleventh-best album of the year in The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics' poll for 1984.^[31]

Billboard magazine named the album one of its "Top Album Picks" for the week of October 29, 1983. Lauper was described as "fevered cross between Lene Lovich and Chrissie Hynde" and the album as "a splashy debut squarely aimed at the post-punk market". Billboard predicted a "successful career launch" with the "strong array" of songs on the album and Lauper's "impassioned vocal attack".^[32]

Retrospectively, AllMusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine deemed She's So Unusual "one of the great new wave/early MTV records" and "a giddy mix of self-confidence, effervescent popcraft, unabashed sentimentality, subversiveness, and clever humor", concluding that "if Lauper couldn't maintain this level of consistency, it's because this captured her persona better than anyone could imagine".^[4] Slant Magazine's Sal Cinquemani called it "a pop classic" with a "rare balance of camp and candor that set Lauper apart from her contemporaries and continues to retain her place in the pop pantheon."^[2] In Classic Pop, John Earls praised the album as a testament to Lauper's "will, exuberance and vocal control" and versatility "across synth-pop, rock and power ballads",^[23] while Terry Staunton wrote in Record Collector that Lauper's "cartoon-like kooky personality was underpinned by a formidable songwriting talent."^[26] Arielle Gordon of Pitchfork said that with She's So Unusual, "Lauper shoehorned rebellion into the familiar, both musically and visually", helping to "usher in an electronic era for popular rock" and envisioning "a world where women danced through New York in ruffle skirts and combat boots, partied with a sense of purpose, and were just as powerful at their most vulnerable as their most ferocious."^[25]

The album has sold over 16 million copies worldwide.^[34]

She's So Unusual and its singles earned Lauper six Grammy Award nominations, including Album of the Year and ultimately winning the awards for Best Recording Package and Best New Artist. "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" was nominated for Record of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, and "Time After Time" was nominated for Song of the Year. Lauper earned ten MTV Video Music Award nominations. "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" received six nominations including Video of the Year, and won for Best Female Video. "Time After Time" received three nominations and "She Bop" received one nomination.

She's So Unusual was ranked at number 494 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time in 2003,^[13] rising to number 487 in a 2012 update of the list,^[44] then to number 184 in a 2020 update.^[14] Rolling Stone also placed She's So Unusual at number 41 on its 2002 list of 50 essential albums by women in rock,^[45] and the record retained the placement on a similar list published by the magazine a decade later.^[46] In 2012, Slant Magazine listed it as the 22nd best album of the 1980s, calling it an "absolutely peerless collection of profound pop jewels".^[47] Slant also included it on their 2003 list of 50 Essential Pop Albums.^[48] In 2019, the Library of Congress selected She's So Unusual for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".^[15]

The 30th anniversary of She's So Unusual occurred in 2013. To honor it and to thank her fans for its success, Lauper embarked on She's So Unusual: 30th Anniversary Tour, a world tour.

As part of the show, Lauper sang the entire track listing of the record in the order it appears on the CD while telling stories about the production of the record and her life at the time she recorded it.