Whether you love or despise it, Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Want to Have Fun will always be a key part of 80s pop music. What I didn’t know is that Lauper was performing a cover of Robert Hazard’s song of the same name. His original version is a new wave tune, with some touches of punk and two-tone ska:
It’s a little different.
mikethemadbiologist
This article is the best exemplar I’ve seen of the huge difference that a change-of-perspective makes. The song’s original version isn’t nearly as good as Lauper’s, but the difference is much bigger than merely the quality; it’s even more in the gender-perspectives: the original being masculine, and the Lauper being feminine. Lauper was here redefining, for access by a mass audience, the feminist message, that male and female are two very different perspectives on the same reality.
Now, for another mind-blower, Money Changes Everything was also a cover, the original version done by an Atlanta band named The Brains.