Cyndi Lauper's She's So Unusual was the first LP I ever owned. My parents got it for me when I was five or six and I would play it over and over and over again on my beige and brown Fisher Price record player until the songs became interwoven into and as familiar as the everyday sounds of my house -- the washing machine chugging, the phone ringing, my little brother learning to tackle going down the staircase by bumping his bottom from one step to the next with a thump.
So when I say I'm a little disappointed with Lady Lauper's choice to take her latest single, "Set Your Heart" from 2008's dance-heavy Bring Ya To The Brink and mash it up with her perhaps best known hit "Girls Just Want To Have Fun," it's not because I'm a hater. It's just that Cyndi has already released this track 47 times! There's the original, the disco remix, the acoustic breakdown mix, the "let's play all the song's percussion on chicken drumsticks on garbage can lids" mix, etc. etc. So why do it again? Give "Set Your Heart" a chance to be played to death in every sticky, strobe-lit gay bar in the country on it's own without resorting to beefing it up with your 20+-year-old hit!
What's more -- the video for the mash up looks like someone bred Rihanna's "Umbrella" clip with the costumes from Madonna's Girlie Show performance of "Justify My Love" and hired Gwen Stefani's gaggle of Harajuku girls to be the backup dancers! Ho-to-the-hum!
Sorry if this seems way harsh Cyndi, but it's only because I love you and expect more from you. How about from here on out you promise to have a little more faith in your abilities and your new music and I promise to not be quite so hard on you. Deal? Deal.
-- NOAH MICHELSON
Previously > Cyndi hits the showers
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