Cyndi

I saw a concert Friday night. It was good. It was Cyndi Lauper. Apparently, she has a new album out called The Body Acoustic. The material on it is essentially old material that she has decided to strip down and reinterpret as “porch music” according to her web site. It’s been 2 days and I am still trying to figure out the best way to describe it. Best to just dive in, I suppose.

The concert itself was pretty good. It was outdoors at one of the smaller casinos. For the official first day of fall, we had some nice weather, probably no more than about 70 degrees that evening. Unfortunately, there was a breeze. It was relentless. It wasn’t too bad in the beginning, but as the night wore on you could see it was starting to have an effect on everyone, including Cyndi. There were some equipment problems, she started to get cold and eventually put a jacket on, and she had a slight cough that started to become more prevalent as the night wore on, although it didn’t not appear to affect her ability to belt out a song. Although everyone seemed to have a good time, I have to believe that Cyndi was less than thrilled with the whole experience even remarking at one point “can you believe we are practically in the parking lot?”

As for the music itself, she hasn’t lost her touch. Even with the new arrangements to her songs, she doesn’t shy away from the high notes and still displays a lot of energy for hitting the ripe old age of 53 this year. She also plays an interesting number of instruments. The first song, “Come on Home” from the Twelve Deadly Cyns album had her playing the flute. She also ended up playing the dulcimer, acoustic guitar and piano. I think it was the dulcimer that gave the show the “porch music” description she mentioned. Apparently, when Cyndi goes acoustic, it means going somewhere that is a cross between bluegrass/folk and reggae. It’s a strange mix.

I bought the CD today and many of the songs are duets. She does Time after Time with Sarah McLachlan and Sisters of Avalon with Ani DeFranco and Vivian Green. Listening to this CD, I thought perhaps she could have also named it “Echoes of Lilithfair.” It was almost like what I would imagine the Indigo Girls might have done if they decided to put out a Cyndi Lauper tribute album. (With a New York accent, of course) It’s not bad, it’s just different. After spending a lot of time reading up on Ms. Lauper, “different” seems to be an appropriate description.

As I spent time thinking about her and her career, I wondered if there was anyone comparable out there to her today. The easiest comparison for me to make was actually based on physical appearance and the ability to belt out a song. That person was Christina Aguilera. So just for fun, I did some checking into the backgrounds of each of the little dynamos and found some interesting coincidences. Not really enough to warrant an episode of the X-Files, but it made for some interesting reading.

First, let’s start with some basic bio information on both. Cyndi was born on June 22, 1953 in New York and is 5’3”. Christina was born December 18, 1980 also in New York and stands 5’2”. Both ladies won the Best New Artist Grammy. Cyndi won hers in 1984 for She’s So Unusual, and Christina won hers in 2000 her self-titled album. After winning a Grammy, both artists decided to stretch a bit with their images, each with different results.

Cyndi started hanging out with the WWF and helped produce an album under the name Mona Flambé. She also wrote a song for the Goonies movie soundtrack as well as the theme song for Pee Wee’s Playhouse. After all that nonsense, she decided she wanted to be taken more seriously and became more involved in both songwriting and production. True Colors was the follow up album to She’s So Unusual. Although it produced a couple of hits, none of her subsequent albums matched the success of her first. Many have been received well critically, including her album of standards, but all have failed to reach the same type of commercial success.

After Christina won her Grammy, she also wanted to get away from her pop princess image, which was understandable since she was trying to differentiate herself from former BFF and MMC cast mate Britney Spears. Taking advantage of the fact that she was half Ecuadorian and that the world was exploding with Latin music, she put out a Spanish album (which she learned phonetically, since she can’t speak Spanish). She also decided she wanted to be taken a bit more seriously (I think), but chose to go about it by shedding the good girl image along with her clothes, thus becoming Xtina. Her follow up album, Stripped made quite a statement. She also became involved with a movie when she teamed up with Pink, Mya and Lil Kim to remake Lady Marmalade for the Moulin Rouge soundtrack. The effort would result in another Grammy in 2002. Most recently, Christina has reinvented herself yet again, this time in the image of a glamour girl from the 40’s with her latest album, Back to Basics.

Some other things these two have in common:

• Cyndi has one son who was born on November 19. Christina was married on November 19.
• Both singers are said to have a 4-octave range.
• Patti Labelle is the godmother to Cyndi’s son. Patti Labelle is also the original singer for Lady Marmalade, the song for which Christina won her 2002 Grammy.
• Both women appear on VH-1’s 50 Greatest Women of the Video Era.

Obviously these two have made some very different choices in their careers in terms of style and direction. Age has a lot to do with it I think. Cyndi won her new artist Grammy at the age of 30 while Christina was only 19. The music industry was different, MTV was still relatively new, and there was no Internet or iTunes. It will be interesting to see what happens to both of them as time goes on. I don’t own anything by Christina yet. I appreciate her voice, although perhaps I am waiting for her to decide who she wants to be. Maybe she won’t decide for a while and that’s fine. That’s why they make greatest hits CD’s. Here are some pictures I found of them.