487: Cyndi Lauper — She’s So Unusual (1983, Portrait Records)

Overall rating: 2.5

Level of Prior Familiarity: 1

How I Listened: Spotify

I dreaded this one. Not for any reason, really, other than I had a lot of preconceived notions about who Cyndi Lauper is.

So let me start with this: “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” is one of the greatest pop songs of all time. Full stop.

Also: “The Goonies ‘r’ Good Enough” is forever burned into my brain, not so much because it’s attached to one of the greatest movies of all time, but because I played the shit out of The Goonies II on the NES, which features an endlessly repeating 8-bit version of this song.

That’s about where my knowledge of Cyndi Lauper stopped, and I was perfectly fine with that. Still am.

Fortunately I gave She’s So Unusual a chance. It’s a pretty good record. It’s easy to see how this album can stand out in the barren wasteland that was 1980s pop music.

Hell, it has a fucking Prince song on it, so it gets at least a half point extra for that.

I’m not going to have this album in heavy rotation any time soon. I wouldn’t put it in my personal top 500. But I appreciate this album enough to give it a 2 (plus Prince points).