In A Grammy Salute to Cyndi Lauper, now streaming on Paramount+, the 70-ish, actually ageless singer and songwriter brings her idiosyncratic personality and flair for performance to LA’s Hollywood Bowl, where she recently concluded her Girls Just Wanna Have Fun world tour. That run of shows was called Lauper’s farewell to the road, so like Elton John, the singer frames this Hollywood Bowl performance as both a career compendium and celebration of her legacy. Featuring a duet with Joni Mitchell, Grammy Salute to Cyndi Lauper also includes appearances by Cher, John Legend, SZA, Mickey Guyton, Angélique Kidjo, Jake Wesley Rogers, and Trombone Shorty.
Opening Shot: Ladies and Gentlemen, Cher. “Tonight, Cyndi Lauper invites us to celebrate her last show on the road. But it’s definitely not the last chapter.”
The Gist: “She bop, he bop, a-we bop!” When Cyndi Lauper appears, the crowd is ready. And following the set list from her world tour, she opens with the third single from her 1984 debut. Which is, as they say, a bop, and it remains so. Next it’s “The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough.” And when you’re a star singing a farewell show onstage in Los Angeles, you get some stars from The Goonies – cutaway to Corey Feldman and Martha Plimpton – to attend your concert. Lauper is also up there sharing thoughts and stories, from her life and career. “Because if we can’t share our stories, how we gonna evolve?”
“I Drove All NIght,” “Who Let in the Rain,” “Time After Time” – as the songs continue, so does Lauper’s easy mastery of confessional banter to the crowd. She’s funny, cool, endearing and thoughtful, sometimes in the space of 30 seconds. And she also continues to bring out guests, like when John Legend emerges from the wings of the stage to sing a duet part on “Time After Time.” The song itself is a nostalgia trip, an enormo-ballad for days. But for Grammy Salute, and with Legend’s graceful contribution, Lauper’s performance feels fresh and creative.
It’s a template she returns to throughout the set, like with a rhythm breakdown that becomes “Iko Iko,” inspired by New Orleans’ second line tradition and featuring guests Angélique Kidjo and Trombone Shorty. It’s used to similar effect for Joni Mitchell’s appearance with Lauper and her band, which combines reverence for Mitchell’s work with Lauper’s personal riff on her influence. By the time the set finds its way back to the 1980s and the unbridled energy of early Lauper records like She’s So Unusual, it’s with a spirited appearance by pop singer Jake Wesley Rogers on “Money Changes Everything.” And because Cyndi Lauper is a musical completist as much as she is a true iconoclast, her Hollywood Bowl version of “Money” includes the melodica solo.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? CBS’s partnership with the Grammys has produced various versions of these artist tribute specials; Cyndi Lauper’s is matched with a similar recent event, in celebration of Earth, Wind & Fire. Adele One Night Only featured a Los Angeles performance by the singer alongside her interviews with Oprah Winfrey. And Billie Eilish, who contributes to this special with a video testimonial to Lauper, took to the Hollywood Bowl stage in 2021 for Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles.
Our Take: “We write our chapters, and we write our book. We make it. We evolve.” It’s striking how little Cyndi Lauper cares about resting on her laurels. That is the entire concept behind a television special like this one, a format’s that’s been around since television and specials. And they can become bland “play the hits” retreads, bloated and completely devoid of soul. Not Grammy Salute to Cyndi Lauper, which is instead shot through with the singer’s bold perspective on music, art, and life. With commercials, the special runs nearly two hours, because while she fills it with hit singles and career highlights, she also holds court from the stage, and the audience is just as enraptured during those moments as with the music. Lauper really knows how to tell a story, and for much more from her in this vein, the 2024 documentary Let the Canary Sing is a must-watch. But for this special, as she references her own career – its highest highs, weirdest sidecuts, and sheer, four-decades’ worth of endurance – she is not simply delivering a personal highlight reel. It’s instead an onstage collection point for wisdom and insight gained, and a reveal for what inspired her along the way. The spiky neon feminism of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” was directly inspired by the lived experiences of the immigrant women in her family.
Lauper is a pro, and puts her talks to the audience in perspective with periodic bursts of music. So the entire package here also really feels as “Live” as one of these TV music specials ever can. (A highlight for any Lauper heads who missed the farewell tour.) It also helps that Lauper uses the Hollywood Bowl’s semicircular curvature into the audience as a kind of sounding board, but it’s also because she never lets up the energy. Through hits, ballads, costume changes, funny asides, and heartfelt life philosophy, Cyndi Lauper makes her Grammy Salute much more than a staid entertainment product. It becomes yet another piece of her unique personality and command of showmanship.
Sex and Skin: From the stage, Cyndi Lauper shouts out her designers, Project Runway winners Geoffrey Mac and Christian Siriano. But she also puts the very idea of such stagewear artifice on display. Lauper performs a quick change onstage, removes her fluorescent wig, and introduces her song “Sally’s Pigeons” while wearing just a skull cap.
Parting Shot: It’s no surprise “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” would be the evening’s big celebratory closer, and from the audience to herself, her band, and Cher, Cyndi Lauper’s special guest on the track, nobody in the Hollywood Bowl wants the party to end.
Sleeper Star: Cyndi Lauper isn’t just a singer, frontwoman, and world record holder in the art of crowd work. For a solo on “She Bop,” Lauper performs on a recorder. She also dons the metal vest-like frottoir for a New Orleans-themed set, and keeps scratching at the washboard-style instrument for her duet with Joni Mitchell on the latter’s “Carey.”
Most Pilot-y Line: “I just want to thank everybody for all the love, for all the years, and uh…all the crazy twists that I did, and there you were.” Cyndi Lauper isn’t faking it, ever, even during the most basic of thank-you’s. It’s all about the honesty of that “Uh” and the breadth of what “crazy twists” contains.
Our Call: Stream It! A Grammy Salute to Cyndi Lauper finds the Grammy, Tony, and Emmy winner in fine form, regaling a live audience with career highlights, interesting duet choices, and a load of personal insight on her life and legacy. Cyndi Lauper’s true colors are still shining through.
A Grammy Salute To Cyndi Lauper is currently streaming on Paramount+.
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Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainme