Cyndi Lauper was preceded onstage by a brief video that zipped through her career, which she drily declared was just in case someone was at the gig by mistake. It’s tempting to wonder what an unexpected visitor might have made of this farewell tour, given it shifted from Rabbie Burns mentions to gestures of support for the LGBT+ community, wig changes and, at one point, Lauper climbing up from a trap door wrapped in what looked like percussive body armour.
It was certainly never a dull evening, right from the familiar bounce of “She Bop” to kick things off. It offered an early chance for the crowd to get on their feet, with plenty wearing bright red wigs that are sold to raise funds for her charitable foundation to support young girls.
Lauper herself is now 71, which is why she has decided to wrap up this stage of her career, embarking on a first arena tour since her 1980s chart heights. It was evidently those hits, and the chance to say goodbye, that lured in a hefty Glasgow crowd, given a somewhat static response to lesser known tracks.
Never mind the age though, because onstage there was still plenty of in your face energy and considerable chatter from Lauper. Her voice, thankfully, sounded fine, given a shaky Glastonbury set last year. Here it was punchy, delivering a suitable wallop to “Money Changes Everything”, but also sweetly tender, as on the stripped back “Sally’s Pigeons” and a snippet of “Wild Mountain Thyme” weaved into “Fearless”.
She was backed by a seven-piece band, all wearing half and half black and white outfits that suggested they’d arrived at the gig fresh from a bank job with Batman villain Two Face. Lauper’s own outfits changed several times, from a more glamourous black dress to a frilled design in eye bleedingly vibrant red and yellow. At one point, she quipped she was trying to avoid showing too much, because “what do you think this is, Doja Cat?” and the whole gig was filled with things happening – costume changes, a video skit, confetti.
That Doja Cat reference was the most modern thing about the night. Lauper’s material was at times so rooted in the decade of origin it couldn’t help but feel dated, perhaps unsurprisingly on a tune like “The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough", which soundtracked such a ubiquitous slice of 80s film cinema but felt flighty here.
However it was true of later work too, as “Sisters of Avalon” stuck too firmly, and too bombastically, to the middle of the road and the ballad “Who Let in the Rain”, was, pardon the pun, a bit of a wash. If material was mixed then Lauper herself was a joy to watch. She cavorted onstage and ran through anecdotes and jokes like a buzzsaw, and even among the slick trappings of an arena gig there was a sense you couldn’t be certain what she would do next.
Such a personality kept everything ticking over, aided by some tunes that did connect, like a rockabilly tinged cover of Wanda Jackson’s “Funnel of Love” and the robust AOR of “I Drove All Night”, to which she joked about her parallel parking skills afterward.
Then came the big hits, satisfying the nostalgia fix some were clearly seeking. Yet as a rainbow flag wafted over her during “True Colours”, or she slipped in a line about women’s rights to the show closing cheer of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, it felt like her best songs have more relevance than ever. Best of all was “Time after Time”, accompanied by a sea of lit mobile phones, a touching heart-tugger underneath the evening chaotic vibe.
How to sum Lauper up to that imaginary outsider, then? As a one-off, right down to her closing words at this alleged farewell show – that she’d see us again next year.
