Peak: #3 on the Hot 100
Streams: 9 million
No matter how well I know a song, I often find there’s something more to learn. For instance, I have listened to Madonna’s “Vogue” and “Open Your Heart” approximately 30 million times apiece, and it was only a few years ago that I discovered the music videos for both include paintings by the renowned artist Tamara de Lempicka. It was decades after I first heard a-ha’s “Take On Me” that I finally realized the chorus lyric says “I’ll be gone in a day or two” and not “I’ll be gone after your dream.”
And it was just today, this very second, that I learned The Bangles sing the backing vocals on Cyndi Lauper’s “Change of Heart.” As you might recall, I love The Bangles, so this gave me a brand new way to enjoy this Jordache banger.
By “Jordache banger,” I mean this song sounds so very 80s that it should come with a free pair of Jordache jeans. Everything about the production and instrumentation suggests Don Johnson driving his Corvette through Miami. Yet despite this retro vibe — or perhaps because of it — “Change Of Heart” immediately grabs the ear. That’s partly because of the striking, start-stop tempo, but it’s mostly because of Cyndi Lauper’s phenomenal vocal. She’s yowling. She’s gasping. Sometimes she’s belting huge notes, and sometimes she’s crooning and slurring like a piano bar singer who just tossed back her fifth pink squirrel.
This is why Cyndi Lauper was such a big star. It’s not only that she had great songs — though she did — but also that she sang them like nobody else ever could. She co-wrote “Change of Heart” (not to mention hits like “Time After Time,” “She-Bop,” and the underappreciated “The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough”), so it make sense that she crafted them for her inimitable voice. But even when she scored with songs written by other people, she essentially authored them with her vocal performance. Can you imagine anybody else singing “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”?
Or what about “True Colors,” the title track from the album that also gave us “Change of Heart”? Frankly, I dislike “True Colors,” its sappy-ass lyrics, and its “please let me win this beauty pageant” energy . But I almost like it when Cyndi Lauper sings it, because she makes it sound so strange. She coos the verses like an adult baby, then rasps out the chorus like the aforementioned piano bar singer just finished a pack of Salem Light 100s. If you listen to other people’s saccharine versions of “True Colors,” then you can better appreciate how Cyndi puts sharp edges in a song that’s almost offensively soft.
I’ll admit that I don’t remember hearing “Change of Heart” in the 80s, even though I loved Cyndi Lauper’s music so much that I once confidently declared I was going to marry her. Considering the ubiquity of singles that came before and after, I guess this one was never destined to be one a defining hit. Yet even though I didn’t encounter it until I got the Twelve Deadly Cyns greatest hit album, it now stands as one of my favorites from her. The fact that The Bangles are adding their spectacular harmonies just sweetens the whole deal.
It would also be sweet if you became a paid subscriber to The Lost Songs Project, a labor of love that I’ve been writing for almost two whole years. Two years, y’all! You can support this project right here.
She’s such a fantastic vocalist. I’m sure you’re already familiar with her work with Blue Angel before her solo career but if you’re not, this video is certainly worth checking out: https://youtu.be/7MBijekSzDQ