ESSENTIAL CYNDI LAUPER, THE

Personnel includes: Cyndi Lauper (vocals). Producers include: Rick Chertoff, Cyndi Lauper, Lennie Petze, Mark Saunders, Jan Pulsford. Compilation producer: Bruce Dickinson. Recorded between 1983 & 1996. Includes liner notes by Davil Wild. This is part of the "Essential Collection" series. Liner Note Author: David Wild. Recording information: 1983-1996. Photographers: Bruce G. Ando; JoAnn Toy; Deborah Feingold. Cyndi Lauper is a textbook example of F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous dictum "There are no second acts in American lives." The pixieish singer had a few hits after her late mid-1980s domination of the country's popular imagination, and has continued to release fine, mature pop albums all along. Yet her public image is so frozen in stone as that "unusual" girl who sang "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and "Time After Time" that many people have never been able to entirely move past the old multicolored- hair/thrift-shop-clothes image. Fully half of SHE'S SO UNUSUAL appears here, along with eight other hits, including the affecting "True Colours" and the yearning, sexy "I Drove All Night," as well as should-have-been hits like the wistful, beautifully sung title track from Lauper's underrated 1991 album HAT FULL OF STARS. The fizzy new wave pop of "Money Changes Everything" and even the slight soundtrack entry "The Goonies R Good Enough" are as charming as ever, but it's the unfairly ignored later material that makes THE ESSENTIAL CYNDI LAUPER truly essential.