Cyndi Lauper 'Time After Time'

Chart Peak: 3

YouTube

Though not as high-charting a single as 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun', and less of a staple of compilations nowadays, this apparently sold more copies here during the 80s (I'd imagine her first hit has overtaken again in the download era). It's the flipside of the youthful exuberance of that song, being a song full of uncertainty and people fumbling towards trusting each other. Although Lauper was thirty years old by the time the single was released, she captures what feels very like a a teenager's emotional confusion, presumably from memory, and sings with such conviction that you don't need to know or care how current the feelings are.

As a record, 'Time After Time' is notably subtle for the era, impressively reluctant to over-emphasise the genuinely strong chorus and lacking the gloss that we tend to associate with the 1980s. It's the faint strains and imperfections in her vocal performance that make it feel powerful and genuine, along with co-writer Rob Hyman's slightly odd backing vocal, which is in places quite divergent from the lead. That fits, and as she stumbles to the end of the song whispering the title, you feel like you're right there with her in whatever adventure is going on. It took me long time to realise just how good this was, and I think I might only really have got it when I happened to buy an 80s compilation that bucked the trend and did include this one.

Also appearing on: Now 2, 29
Available on: Time After Time: The Best Of

Cyndi Lauper 'Girls Just Want To Have Fun'

Chart Peak: 2

YouTube

I remember this song going around the playground at the time, but back then I think I felt slightly confused by it because I wasn't a girl (I'm still not in fact) and for that reason this didn't seem to have very much to do with me. And whilst it's a song that I've heard not infrequently since, I don't think I've ever really given it much thought.

What catches the attention now is the effervescent energy of the track. It's not actually as fast as I thought it was, but it makes the most of a relatively subtle arrangement, with the Farfisa organ in the right channel playing a relentless pattern that creates a sort of nervous force and balances the repeated guitar figure on the left. In the middle, Lauper herself has a lot of room to play and play is what she does: a lot of the words are garbled and stretched but it all gives the impression that she's having a lot of fun herself and this is what makes it work. It's fluff to be sure, but wholly committed fluff - unlike a lot of self-consciously upbeat pop music it doesn't sound as if somebody's gone out of their way to sound upbeat or talk down to the audience. You can almost believe that they ran into the studio and made it up on the spot. They don't half milk that chorus though, which is what begins to put me off. If there's one broad criticism I can make of pop in this decade, it's that even unpretentious pop tracks seem to be a lot longer than they really need to be for no apparent reason.


Also appearing on: Now 3, 29
Available on: She's So Unusual