Cyndi Lauper is a groundbreaking Grammy, Emmy, and Tony Award-winning songwriter and performing artist with global record sales in excess of 50 million. Her iconic voice, influential punk glamor, and infectious live shows have catapulted her to stardom. Lauper won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist with her first album, She’s So Unusual, and became the first woman in history to have four top-five singles from a debut album. Since then, Lauper has released ten additional studio albums, yielding timeless classics like “Time After Time” and “True Colors,” and the anthemic “Girls Just Want To Have Fun.” She has been nominated for 15 Grammy Awards, two American Music Awards, seven American Video Awards, and 18 MTV Awards. In 2013, Cyndi Lauper became the first solo woman to win Best Original Score (music and lyrics) for Kinky Boots. She contributed a Tony-nominated song to the score of the Broadway musical SpongeBob SquarePants and is currently writing the score for the Broadway adaptation of the 1988 feature film Working Girl. A pillar of success, Lauper was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2015 and awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2016. She has also released a New York Times best-selling memoir, was honored with Billboard’s Women In Music ICON Award in 2018 and the inaugural High Note Global Prize issued by United Nations Human Rights in 2019. In 2022 her famous music video for “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” joined the YouTube Billion Views Club and the timeless longevity of her music continues to soundtrack hit TV shows and films, including Stranger Things, Reservation Dogs, The Goldbergs and Young Sheldon.
Let The Canary Sing, the definitive feature documentary film on her remarkable life and career, directed by Alison Ellwood, made its world premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival and released widely in June 2024 on Paramount+. Her 2024-’25 Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Farewell Tour – across the U.S., Europe and U.K – is underway.
Lauper is also tireless in her advocacy work. She has been an activist since day one, always fighting for the underdog – especially women, people living with HIV/AIDS, and the LGBTQ community. Her commitment runs so deep that she co-founded True Colors United in 2008 to bring an end to homelessness amongst LGBTQ youth, who make up to 40% of the youth homelessness population. In the fall of 2022, in response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Lauper launched the Girls Just Want To Have Fundamental Rights Fund, which was formed to financially support women’s issues in an inclusive way. The donor advised fund housed at the Tides Foundation will provide grants to organizations that advance women’s rights and health.
