Introduction
In 1983, when Cyndi Lauper released “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” on her album She’s So Unusual, it garnered so much fame that it became one of the most well-known feminist anthems in the country. Several artists covered the song in subsequent years, and Lauper herself released a remastered version. However, few people are aware, even today, that the song is a cover version of Robert Hazard’s original demo, recorded in 1979 but never released officially (the demo is currently available on several media platforms, including YouTube). The two songs are different in many aspects, most importantly lyrics and instrumentation. These distinctions, which I will elaborate on over the course of this paper, go on to highlight significant …show more content…
Some sections of the song, such as the bridge, were removed from the cover version. What most influences the misogynistic tone of the original lyrics is probably simply the fact that they are being sung by a woman, which means that the “I” in the song is very different in the cover. The cover lyrics emphasize the equality of the sexes, or in Lauper’s own words, mean that “girls want to have the same damn experience that any man could have.”
With a change in the subject of the song and the perspective with which it is sung, the appeal of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” changes. While the potential audience of the original demo can only be surmised, it would definitely have been very different from the audience of the cover version, which, at the time of the release, mostly consisted of teenage girls. In this way, the lyrical differences are a contributing factor.
Differences in Instrumentation As the two songs do not belong to the same (or even similar) genre, it is obvious that the style of the songs would be distinctly dissimilar from one
In 1983, when Cyndi Lauper released “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” on her album She’s So Unusual, it garnered so much fame that it became one of the most well-known feminist anthems in the country. Several artists covered the song in subsequent years, and Lauper herself released a remastered version. However, few people are aware, even today, that the song is a cover version of Robert Hazard’s original demo, recorded in 1979 but never released officially (the demo is currently available on several media platforms, including YouTube). The two songs are different in many aspects, most importantly lyrics and instrumentation. These distinctions, which I will elaborate on over the course of this paper, go on to highlight significant …show more content…
Some sections of the song, such as the bridge, were removed from the cover version. What most influences the misogynistic tone of the original lyrics is probably simply the fact that they are being sung by a woman, which means that the “I” in the song is very different in the cover. The cover lyrics emphasize the equality of the sexes, or in Lauper’s own words, mean that “girls want to have the same damn experience that any man could have.”
With a change in the subject of the song and the perspective with which it is sung, the appeal of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” changes. While the potential audience of the original demo can only be surmised, it would definitely have been very different from the audience of the cover version, which, at the time of the release, mostly consisted of teenage girls. In this way, the lyrical differences are a contributing factor.
Differences in Instrumentation As the two songs do not belong to the same (or even similar) genre, it is obvious that the style of the songs would be distinctly dissimilar from one