The recent announcement of Cyndi Lauper’s final concerts sent me traveling down memory lane.

One summer day in 2002, I discovered that I had some time to kill. As I biked around Lincoln Park, I recalled that Lauper was doing an instore mini concert & signing at the (late, lamented) Tower Records on Clark in Chicago. I decided to fill up a bit of my morning by attending. 

Little did I know that side trip would turn into an all-day adventure. 

After purchasing her (then) new EP Shine – which served as my ticket into the show, I was sent outside to wait. Two hours later, we were led back into the building…and there she was on a hastily constructed stage! It was truly awesome to see her perform in such close proximity. She even broke down & shed tears of joy when some of her hard-core fans began singing along with her on latest ballad called Water’s Edge – probably one of my favorite concert moments of all time. 

We then were put in another long line to meet her. I, honestly, thought about leaving, but I figured I had already put in a lot of effort & time. When I got to her at last, she happily signed my CD….but just as we were about to take a photo, one of her handlers approached her & told her that she could no longer personalize the signatures as they had to leave soon for the United Center (where she was opening for Cher — coincidentally, for that icon’s own never-ending, inaccurately entitled goodbye tour.)

“Oh,” she cried, “I don’t want them to hate me! I have to let them know!” A very sweet notion – & a moment captured forever by the employee who was taking our picture. The first shot here is of her getting the news & the second is of her addressing the crowd. I suppose I could also look at the experience as a lesson in life’s eternal sense of balancing expectations. My photos with her are kind of funky…but I did get the last personally addressed CD!

One song that she did not sing that day, but one that ultimately served as the opener for her set in the 2007 True Colors shows, was Hole in my Heart (All the Way to China). Taken from the soundtrack to Vibes, the bizarre ’80s comedy that saw her playing an eccentric psychic opposite Jeff Goldblum’s equally odd clairvoyant, this number is an underground fan favorite. 

Of course, in this critically maligned offering that phenomenon was played for humor. It would be decades later before Lauper, playing a Broadway musical loving private detective, would fully enter the world of horror in the Sweeney Todd inspired The Horrors of Dolores Roach. 

A Land of Terror Tunes:

Additionally, Lauper’s quiet storm ballad All Through the Night was used to grand effect in the well-regarded Netflix spook show The Haunting of Bly Manor. Her almost 300 soundtrack credits also include spots on such horror adjacent television programs as Ghost Whisperer, Bones and Medium, as well.