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Come home in the morning light
Aug. 25th, 2022 08:29 pmSo I posted this over on my tumblr, but it's a good post for here too.
Stranger Things 4 has me thinking about the enduring power of music, which in turn got me thinking about meaningful albums in my life.
When I was around 5 or so I got a little portable boombox for Christmas one year to go along with the Get In Shape Girls toy set thing. Shortly after this I convinced my mom to get me my first non Disney sing along cassette tape, and that tape was Cyndi Lauper’s She’s So Unusual.
My favorite song was, unsurprisingly, Girls Just Want to Have Fun. And a whole lot of the innuendos and references of the songs on the album went right over little me’s head. But I loved the beats and dancing to it and it stayed in play for quite a while before eventually falling to the back of a drawer.
Fast forward a decade and a bit and you find teen me sitting in a movie theater falling in love with To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. I had just started realizing I might not be straight (forgive a kid for growing up primarily in the rural South in the 80s and 90s being a tad slow on the uptake). More importantly, I was starting to realize that being queer didn’t make me some freak of nature that didn’t deserve to exist. That there were other people like me who lived happy and fulfilling lives. The movie ends with a scene that includes both Cyndi Lauper and an updated version of Girls Just Want to Have Fun.
This reminded me that I had that cassette somewhere and prompted me to revisit the album, which suddenly made a lot more sense and was meaningful in very different ways than it had been originally. I suddenly had more appreciation for She Bop, for instance, but my new favorite song was probably Money Changes Everything. I actually listened to that tape enough after finding it again that I wore it out.
I still love Cyndi Lauper (and not just the She’s So Unusual album). I even got to see her live in my early 20s. And Girls Just Want to Have Fun always brings back fond memories, not just of little me or teen me, but also of me singing it with friends at Karaoke in my 20s, me dancing to it at Pride in my 30s, and even just me bopping around my house in my 40s. I have a feeling it will always make me smile. I still jam out to She Bop from time to time and giggle over my teen self’s realization that it was about masturbation. And I still sing along to Money Changes Everything and feel the melancholy vibes of it in my soul. And some of Cyndi’s other songs still echo through my soul as well. Time After Time and True Colors can still make me cry. The Goonies R Good Enough never fails to make me smile (or to make me think of one of my favorite childhood films).
It’s just fascinating to me that all these years later, I can still remember getting that album and wanting to be like the cool woman on the cover with wild hair and style. There are lots of other artists and albums that have made a lasting impact on me, but that was the first. May I never stop wanting to have fun.
Stranger Things 4 has me thinking about the enduring power of music, which in turn got me thinking about meaningful albums in my life.
When I was around 5 or so I got a little portable boombox for Christmas one year to go along with the Get In Shape Girls toy set thing. Shortly after this I convinced my mom to get me my first non Disney sing along cassette tape, and that tape was Cyndi Lauper’s She’s So Unusual.
My favorite song was, unsurprisingly, Girls Just Want to Have Fun. And a whole lot of the innuendos and references of the songs on the album went right over little me’s head. But I loved the beats and dancing to it and it stayed in play for quite a while before eventually falling to the back of a drawer.
Fast forward a decade and a bit and you find teen me sitting in a movie theater falling in love with To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. I had just started realizing I might not be straight (forgive a kid for growing up primarily in the rural South in the 80s and 90s being a tad slow on the uptake). More importantly, I was starting to realize that being queer didn’t make me some freak of nature that didn’t deserve to exist. That there were other people like me who lived happy and fulfilling lives. The movie ends with a scene that includes both Cyndi Lauper and an updated version of Girls Just Want to Have Fun.
This reminded me that I had that cassette somewhere and prompted me to revisit the album, which suddenly made a lot more sense and was meaningful in very different ways than it had been originally. I suddenly had more appreciation for She Bop, for instance, but my new favorite song was probably Money Changes Everything. I actually listened to that tape enough after finding it again that I wore it out.
I still love Cyndi Lauper (and not just the She’s So Unusual album). I even got to see her live in my early 20s. And Girls Just Want to Have Fun always brings back fond memories, not just of little me or teen me, but also of me singing it with friends at Karaoke in my 20s, me dancing to it at Pride in my 30s, and even just me bopping around my house in my 40s. I have a feeling it will always make me smile. I still jam out to She Bop from time to time and giggle over my teen self’s realization that it was about masturbation. And I still sing along to Money Changes Everything and feel the melancholy vibes of it in my soul. And some of Cyndi’s other songs still echo through my soul as well. Time After Time and True Colors can still make me cry. The Goonies R Good Enough never fails to make me smile (or to make me think of one of my favorite childhood films).
It’s just fascinating to me that all these years later, I can still remember getting that album and wanting to be like the cool woman on the cover with wild hair and style. There are lots of other artists and albums that have made a lasting impact on me, but that was the first. May I never stop wanting to have fun.
