CityLife

Cyndi Lauper

STILL THE EXTROVERT: Lauper

MIDWAY through the debut  UK night of Cyndi Lauper’s comeback tour, and the 55-year-old is overcome with emotion. “You know, I cry at commercials lately...but thank you,” she crackles, eyes wetter than Michael Phelps. “I’ve missed ya!”

Madonna's great nemesis in the early 1980s, Lauper somehow ended up the also-ran, despite possessing a superior voice and quirkier wardrobe.

Yet, 25 years later, she’s back on a high, thanks to latest album, Bring Ya To The Brink, a youthful club-tailored record featuring canny collaborations from Dragonette, Digital Dog and Andreas Kleerup.

Its opening salvo, Same Ol F****** Story (the profanity has been removed from the title of the UK version) has already topped the American Billboard dance chart, while her enduring influence can be glimpsed in newer acts such as Ladyhawke and CSS. 
 
Slinky

Defying Father Time in slinky black trousers and sporting a chic haircut, she looks like Robyn’s mum, as she straddles chairs and writhes around the stage to the opener of Into The Nightlife, a thumping Nurovision electropop stormer, helmed by Max Martin (Britney Spears, P!nk).

It’s one of a handful of new songs she plays tonight, the best of which, Rocking Chair (a co-write with Basement Jaxx), erupts into a full-blown reggaeton riot.

What resonates most, though, is not any one song but Lauper’s presence: she launches herself into the audience like a cruise missile, standing on empty chairs, and pulls no punchlines with her entertaining anecdotes.

Galvanising

Last year, she launched the annual True Colours tour, galvanising US stars from Rufus Wainwright to The B-52s into getting aboard a project to promote gay rights, and here, she breaks into tears (again) when she dedicates  an electrifying performance of torch-song True Colours to a friend that died of AIDS. 
 
Unfortunately, the be-on-your-best-behaviour Bridgewater Hall conspires against the party atmosphere that Lauper is trying to ignite.

Coupled with sound problems, a cajoled audience sing-a-long of perenial wedding reception floorfiller Girls Just Want To Have Fun fizzles then flatlines, while She Bop, is slowed down and stripped of its spark. Still, criticproof classics such as Time After Time and her plaintive cover of Roy Orbison’s I Drove All Night shine. 
 
“I have high-definition ADHD,” she yelps in her Betty Boop Queens drawl, in one of her bizarre Dorothy Parker-on-acid asides. “Does that make me a TV?”.

The message – sent out to a generation of imitators such as Gwen Stefani – is that she’s still so unusual.

What did you think? Have your say.