She’s won an Emmy and a Grammy, appeared on Broadway, in film and television and released 11 albums. Despite selling more than 55 million albums worldwide, 25 years later people still want to hear her sing Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.
“Oh my god, it’ll be old and new,” she stresses when asked if her upcoming UK tour will still feature her original material. “It’s always old and new. I can’t do that, that would be mean. You’d have to play those songs, c’mon,” she drawls in her very distinct Brooklyn accent.
We’ve already gotten slightly flustered and mistakenly asked her about the True Colors tour rather than the Bring Ya To Brink tour (“I get confused all the time,” she laughs when we apologise). Both are very different animals.
While True Colors has seen her undertake a battle for human rights – more on that later – Bring Ya To The Brink celebrates her new album of the same name, a full-on modern classic that was produced with the likes of Basement Jaxx, Digital Dog, Dragonette and Kleerup – all masters at the art of dance.
“I approached people,” she says of the process that saw her co-working with such producers. “I was excited. They’re madcap and brilliant and they were a lot of fun. I laughed a lot and they laughed, so we had a good time. You know, stupid me, I didn’t even realise that I had given Basement Jaxx their Grammy for Best Dance Album [in 2004]. I didn’t realise that because it was very nerve-wracking for me. I hate those kind of events because you have to look so perfect and you know I’m anything but perfect.”
Brink, which is almost perfect, was an album she’d be planning for a long time, she says. “I wanted to do modern music. I had done two special projects, you know, and they were what they were but I wanted to get back to my own work again, making modern music and I thought if I reached out to other artists/producers – people who’d produced their own work – we’d have similar mindsets because I’m an artist/producer and I figured it’d be like a little band, and it would be kinda like a new thing. I approached it like that hoping that it would be like a jukebox almost.
“Then I found Jeremy Wheatley who was absolutely brilliant and did a great job of marrying everything together without losing the personality of each one of us, you know?”
Speaking of the “special projects” – At Last and The Body Acoustic – we ask whether being able to move away from such work was like shedding a skin.
“Shedding a skin though? Wow. I don’t know about shedding a skin,” she laughs, “but it felt just like going back home. Because those other things were interesting, and how many times in your life are you going to be able to do that? But I didn’t want to do that forever, that would make me a little crazy.”
So to True Colors, an American tour that has grown to become something of an event, featuring queer and queer friendly performers from around the world. Something, we suggest, that would be great in this country. Any chance she could set it up?
“Oh I would love to, but it takes a while to organise,” she sighs. “It took me two years to organise in the States and it will probably take me more internationally. It’s a big undertaking. You know, I’m still learning, we all are. My partners and I are still learning how to do it because we’re green. We’re hoping that we made a difference and helped people.”
Asked what it was that was the catalyst for getting involved with human rights campaigning, Lauper jumps right in.
“I’m friends and family of the community. So it makes me the evil cousin or the evil sister, whatever. But I have been involved for a long time. I just think that discrimination is wrong, straight across the board and I’ve always tried to appeal to people who aren’t in the community to stand up for those they love. To try and understand that people are different. They don’t choose to be different, they just are.”
She talks us through some causes she’s been involved with, firstly P Flag (on which she worked with her sister), then Stay Close, which led her onto HRC, where she met Judy Shepherd, the mother of murdered gay teenager Matthew.
“I just thought ‘I’m a parent now, I should do stuff too’,” she says of the encounter. “The world is an important place to take care of and there’s so many kids coming up who are different – not everybody’s the same. And this whole teaching hate stuff, that’s just gotta go. So I thought the best way – I wanted to do a tour because the [gay] clubs were always a refuge for me. I’d run to the clubs and there would be not dealing with the straight world ‘cos I can’t even deal with them sometimes. That sounds kinda funny but its true.
“I find the community to be more accepting of who you are. They don’t care if you come riding in on horseback – and I haven’t done that yet, but I did come out of a gorilla suit, which they found amusing you know, and wasn’t a problem,” she shrugs.
She laughs, recalling a particular moment on the tour. “My favourite was chasing Hansel and Gretel through the crowd with a pizza shovel, trying to get them back in the oven. I was a wicked witch!
“For me, to work that community, I’d rather be there. But when I started to work the community and see the things that were wrong, and the things that were going on and weren’t right, maybe I figured I could influence people to stand together more and respect themselves and help each other, things like that.”
She laughs. “I try and talk about it without banging people over the head. Its good to make people laugh and sing and think you know? Have some information so they can learn how to help themselves because hopelessness is only directly from feeling helpless. If you don’t feel helpless then it’s not a hopeless situation, you can help yourself.”
But back to these shores, and her impending return to tour our fair isle. “It’s gonna be a lot of fun,” she says. “I haven’t toured the UK since 1994 and that’s a long time. It was always great.”
Of course, she did dip her toe back into that particular pool recently with a much-publicised appearance at London club G-A-Y.
“It was an honour to play that club, I didn’t know it stood for Good As You. I couldn’t wait to tell my friends. It was wild, they were great,” she says happily of the ecstatic sell-out crowd. “So much fun – for them, for me.”
But back onto the topic of her old classics, we have to cheekily ask before we leave her – will she be performing the theme from The Goonies, Goonies R Good Enough?
“Ya know…” She pauses to think this suggestion over.
“I just might.”