She's So Unusual is the debut studio album by American singer and songwriter Cyndi Lauper, released on October 14, 1983, by Portrait Records. It stands out for its commercial success, achieving four top-five singles—a pioneering achievement for a debut album by a female artist.[5] The album was re-released in 2014 to commemorate its 30th anniversary, and was called She's So Unusual: A 30th Anniversary Celebration. The re-release contains demos and remixes of previously released material, as well as new artwork.[6]
In 1978, Lauper formed the band Blue Angel.[7] The band soon signed a recording contract with Polydor Records; however, their debut album, Blue Angel, was a commercial failure. The band parted ways after firing their manager, who sued Lauper for $80,000 and forced her into bankruptcy.[8] Lauper went on to sing in many New York night clubs, and caught the eye of David Wolff, who became her manager and subsequently got her signed to Portrait Records.
Six singles were released from the album, with "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" becoming a worldwide hit and her first song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100. "Time After Time" became her first number-one hit on the chart and experienced similar success worldwide. Lauper found success with the next two singles as well, with both "She Bop" and "All Through the Night" peaking in the top five. This makes Lauper the first female singer to have four top five singles on the Hot 100 from one album.[9]She's So Unusual was promoted by the Fun Tour throughout 1983 and 1984.
The album is primarily new wave-based, with many of the songs being influenced by synthpop and pop rock. Upon its release, the album received positive reviews from music critics, who noted Lauper's unique vocals. Lauper earned several awards and accolades for the album, including two Grammy Awards at the 27th Grammy Awards, one of which was for Best New Artist. She's So Unusual peaked at number four on the Billboard 200 chart and stayed in the chart's top forty for 65 weeks. It has sold over 7 million copies in the United States and 16 million copies worldwide. This makes it Lauper's best-selling album to date and one of the best-selling albums of the 1980s.[10][11] In 2003, She's So Unusual was ranked at number 494 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time,[12] and it subsequently placed at number 184 in a 2020 reboot of the list.[13] In 2019, the album was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[14]
Background
In 1978, Lauper met saxophone player John Turi and formed the band Blue Angel. They recorded a demo tape of original music. Steve Massarsky heard the tape and liked Lauper's voice. He bought out Blue Angel's contract for $5,000 and became their manager.
Lauper received many offers to go solo, but rebuffed any offer that didn't include the rest of the band. Blue Angel was eventually signed by Polydor Records and released a self-titled album on the label in 1980. Despite some positive critical attention, the album was a commercial failure. The members of Blue Angel also had a falling-out with Massarsky and fired him as their manager. He later filed an $80,000 suit against them, which forced Lauper into bankruptcy.[8]
After Blue Angel broke up, Lauper spent time working in retail stores and singing in local clubs. In 1981, while singing in a local New York bar, Lauper met David Wolff, who took over as her manager. With his help, Lauper signed with Portrait Records, a subsidiary of Epic Records, in the spring of 1983 and soon began recording her debut album.[15]
Artwork
The front cover of She's So Unusual was photographed on Henderson Walk in Coney Island, New York in the summer of 1983 by Annie Leibovitz. Lauper is depicted wearing a vintage red prom-style dress that she purchased at the vintage clothing shop where she used to work, Screaming Mimi's. She is also seen holding a bouquet of flowers which were purchased from a vendor on the boardwalk at the time of the shoot. Lauper has heavy costume jewelry on her ears, arms, neck and her right ankle. She is barefoot, with the exception of the fishnet stockings, and her red high-heels appear to have been taken off in front of her as they lay on their sides at the bottom of the photo. The cover shot was captured in front of the wax museum, The World In Wax Musee. It can be seen behind Lauper that the museum had been closed for some time and at the time of closure was featuring a wax statue of Puerto Rican baseball great Roberto Clemente. The wooden awning above the doorway with the two blue panels read the name of the museum. The first panel read "The World" and second panel read "In Wax". This was airbrushed out of the photograph.[16]
"Time After Time" was the second single released from the album, and was released in April 1984. It repeated the success of the previous single and spent two consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Lauper's first number one hit on the Hot 100 and eventually spending a total of 20 weeks on the chart and receiving Gold certification from the RIAA for 1,000,000 copies sold.[18] Like the previous single, "Time After Time" was an international success and reached the top ten in 15 countries. The song received a Grammy nomination for Song of the Year. In the year end Top 100 of 1984 in New Zealand, the single was included on the top spots.
The third single from the album was "She Bop", released on July 2, 1984. This single reached number three on the Hot 100, becoming her third consecutive top five hit, and spent a total of 18 weeks on the chart. With sales of over 1,000,000 copies, the song was certified Gold by the RIAA. The single proved to be another international success for Lauper, reaching the top ten in 8 countries. "She Bop" was controversial upon release and placed at number 15 on the PMRC's "Filthy Fifteen".[19]
"All Through the Night" was single number four, released in September 1984. Like Lauper's previous three singles, "All Through the Night" reached the top five of the Hot 100 with a peak of number five. It was written by, and originally recorded by Jules Shear, who provided backup vocals as well. The song was a moderate international success, reaching the top ten in 6 countries, and received Gold certification in Canada.[20] In the year end Top 100 of 1985 in New Zealand, the single was included on the list.
Single number five was "Money Changes Everything", released in December 1984. It was a moderate success and reached number #27 on the Hot 100, Lauper's first single to not reach the top ten. It also did moderately well in Australia, reaching #19 on its chart.
The sixth and final single from the album was a cover of the Prince song, "When You Were Mine", released on January 31, 1985, in Canada and Japan only. It achieved little success, reaching number #62 on the Canadian Singles Chart.
In a contemporary review for Rolling Stone, Kurt Loder highlighted Lauper's "wild and wonderful skyrocket of a voice", which he felt recalled the "long-gone golden age" of "pre-Beatlesgirl-group pop", and lauded She's So Unusual as a progression from her work in Blue Angel: "Here, boosted by a powerful, synth-based band, Lauper turns away from nouveau trash and trains her talent on some really first-rate material."[26]Robert Christgau gave qualified praise in The Village Voice, complimenting Lauper for covering "two of the sharpest pop songs of the past five years" in "Money Changes Everything" and "When You Were Mine", while finding her "Betty Boop voice" less effective over a full album;[29] however, he would later pen a glowing reappraisal of the record, conceding that "if a kook who's loved, respected, and taken seriously by her sisters fools boys into believing she can be fooled with, more power to her."[21]She's So Unusual was voted the eleventh-best album of the year in The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics' poll for 1984.[30]
Retrospectively, AllMusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine deemed She's So Unusual "one of the great new wave/early MTV records" and "a giddy mix of self-confidence, effervescent popcraft, unabashed sentimentality, subversiveness, and clever humor", concluding that "if Lauper couldn't maintain this level of consistency, it's because this captured her persona better than anyone could imagine".[3]Slant Magazine's Sal Cinquemani called it "a pop classic" with a "rare balance of camp and candor that set Lauper apart from her contemporaries and continues to retain her place in the pop pantheon."[1] In Classic Pop, John Earls praised the album as a testament to Lauper's "will, exuberance and vocal control" and versatility "across synth-pop, rock and power ballads",[22] while Terry Staunton wrote in Record Collector that Lauper's "cartoon-like kooky personality was underpinned by a formidable songwriting talent."[25] Arielle Gordon of Pitchfork said that with She's So Unusual, "Lauper shoehorned rebellion into the familiar, both musically and visually", helping to "usher in an electronic era for popular rock" and envisioning "a world where women danced through New York in ruffle skirts and combat boots, partied with a sense of purpose, and were just as powerful at their most vulnerable as their most ferocious."[24]
The album has sold over 16 million copies worldwide.[32]
North America
United States
She's So Unusual debuted on the Billboard 200 chart in the week dated December 24, 1983 at no. 193.[33] The album reached the Top 10 by the end of March 1984 in its 15th week on the chart.[34] It achieved a peak position of no. 4 on the chart dated June 2, 1984, after having stayed on the Billboard 200 for 24 weeks up to that point.[35] Overall, the album stayed 77 weeks on the Billboard 200. It became one of the best-selling albums of 1984. She's So Unusual has since sold over seven million copies in the United States, where it was certified seven times platinum by the RIAA.[36]
Canada
At least until 1986, the album was the second best-selling album in Canada by a female artist during the decade, behind Whitney Houston's self-titled debut album, selling more than 900,000 copies.[37]
Asia
In Japan, the album debuted at no. 14 on the albums chart in the week dated March 26, 1984.[38] It reached its peak position of no. 5 just over a month later in the week dated April 30, 1984.[39]
Oceania
She's So Unusual entered the Australian albums chart in the week dated May 28, 1984 at no. 12.[40] It went to peak in the top three of the albums chart.
She's So Unusual was ranked at number 494 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time in 2003,[12] rising to number 487 in a 2012 update of the list,[41] then to number 184 in a 2020 update.[13]Rolling Stone also placed She's So Unusual at number 41 on its 2002 list of 50 essential albums by women in rock,[42] and the record retained the placement on a similar list published by the magazine a decade later.[43] In 2012, Slant Magazine listed it as the 22nd best album of the 1980s, calling it an "absolutely peerless collection of profound pop jewels".[44] In 2019, the Library of Congress selected She's So Unusual for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[14]
The 30th Anniversary of She's So Unusual occurred in 2013. To honor it and to thank her fans for its success, Lauper embarked on a World Tour called the "She's So Unusual: 30th Anniversary Tour".
A part of the show, Lauper sings the entire track listing of the record in the order it appears on the CD while telling stories about the production of the record and her life at the time she recorded it.
* Sales figures based on certification alone. ^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. ‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone.
^Pitchfork Staff (September 10, 2018). "The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s". Pitchfork. Retrieved April 24, 2023. Her solo debut, She's So Unusual, stands as an all-time great art-pop collage.
^"Hits of the World"(PDF). Billboard. Vol. 97, no. 5. February 2, 1985. p. 80. ISSN0006-2510. Archived(PDF) from the original on October 9, 2022 – via World Radio History.
^"Classifiche". Musica e dischi (in Italian). Retrieved July 26, 2022. Select "Album" in the "Tipo" field, type "She's so unusual" in the "Titolo" field and press "cerca".
^"Lauper"(PDF). Cash Box. December 6, 1986. p. 13. Archived(PDF) from the original on October 9, 2022. Retrieved December 9, 2021 – via World Radio History.
