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Category:    Home > Reviews > Music > New Wave > Rock > Pop > Soul > Cyndi Lauper – She’s So Unusual (1983/Super Audio Compact Disc/SACD/SA-CD Edition)

Cyndi Lauper – She’s So Unusual (1983/Super Audio Compact Disc/SACD/SA-CD Edition)

 

Sound: B+     Music: B+

 

 

After a stint with a band called Blue Angel, singer Cyndi Lauper decided to go solo and backed by the two lead members of the brief-lived The Hooters, Eric Bazilian and Rob Hyman, made an album that far exceeded anything that group would ever make and mark the arrival of the great over-accessorized New Wave pop icon in an album that remains one of the greatest triumphs of the 1980s or any other decade: She’s So Unusual.

 

The first album by a female vocalist to place five singles in the Top 30, a record surprisingly forgotten these days, the hits began late in 1983 with a remarkable remake of a sexist punk song whose title was quite self-explanatory.  However, in the hands of Lauper’s handlers and with her brilliant vocal performance, Girls Just Want To Have Fun became a feminist classic and self-expressive triumph of a mega hit that remains her signature song so much that she remade it again to extend its meaning as a statement against homophobia.

 

In its original form, made even more pronounced by the all-time classic Music Video (directed by Edd Griles, sold on a separate DVD noted below) that helped put MTV on the map, it announced a bright new star pushing the boundaries within the system of what pop music could achieve with if the best combination of risks, material, heart and soul were fused together and Lauper’s New Wave edge was edgier because it never betrayed its Punk roots.  Her voice is amazing and you can heart the empathy delivered like nowhere else in this SACD version.

 

But that was just one track.  Never released as a single is Lauper’s interesting cover of Prince’s When You Were Mine, which remains a popular track for fans of both artists, but the hits just kept on coming.  Time After Time was a safer song, but done so well that it topped the charts, remaining one of the biggest hits of her career.  She Bop, about female sexuality co-written by Lauper, could have been a Prince song except only a woman could have delivered it and Lauper does in one of the oddest tracks of the album.  It was also a huge hit and many did not even know what it meant at the time.

 

All Through The Night was the fourth Top Ten and was so beautiful, it achieved this charting without a Music Video at all, remaining one of the strongest tracks she has ever cut.  Money Changes Everything was a fun hit that did not chart as well as the previous singles, in part since it was a comparatively tougher vocal on Lauper’s part, but seems far from it in this Hip Hop era.  Song after song, the ten tracks here are just amazing as they are enduring, making it a perfect choice for SACD.

 

Though the master can show some of its age at times, the fidelity holds up remarkably well in what (sit down for this) is an album that celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2008.  But a classic is a classic and at a time when the music industry still had its act together, this is the kind of great mainstream music we used to get all the time.  It remains Lauper’s biggest album, though she had more success before running into rough commercial waters, but it set her for life as a formidable artist and continues to stay in print constantly.  This is the highest performance version on the market and a must if you have a Super Audio CD player.  PlayStation 3 fans can actually play these discs, if not to full audiophile level.  Fortunately, many SACD players are out there at decent prices, also able to play regular CDs and even DVDs.  If you love music, look into it.  If you can play SACD, this is a must have disc.

 

 

The DSD (Direct Stream Digital) 2.0 Stereo mix is the only one here and despite some minor limitations form the original recording, shows what a remarkable recording this was for its time and how easy it is to underrate a great singer like Lauper because of her style.  At a time we have a great singer like Gwen Stefani exposing how bad the bland “pop tart” singers of our time are, it is hard to imagine how “unusual” Lauper’s vocal style was, in a time when New Wave seemed so different.

 

It also becomes an interesting demo to see how good your system is at playback, because the recording is so distinct.  Rick Chertoff produced, though sadly, the fold-out-into-a-poster liner notes/lyrics seem to be from the old CBS CD with no SACD notes, so except for Stephen Saper credited as DSD Authoring Engineer, we know nothing from the packaging.  He certainly did a good job.

 

Now SACD fans know that early titles were issued by Sony in two-channel only as the format did not yet offer 5.1 or even a standard PCM CD layer, two choices that we think stopped the format from beating DVD-Audio, prevented it from succeeding CDs and from being a hot item in play as MP3s arrived.  Unlike albums from Carole King and Billy Joel made earlier than this one, She’s So Unusual was not reissued in 5.1, though the DVD-Video of Twelve Deadly Cyns... has Dolby Digital 5.1mixes of three of the hits from this album.  Though not true multi-channel music, they are not just ambience spreading either and better than the flat PCM 2.0 16/48 Stereo tracks likely from the old Japanese LaserDisc.

 

The original master of the album just might not be able to work 5.1 on an audiophile level.  The DSD 2-channel here is warmer, richer and more detailed than either selection on the DVD or any of the CD versions of this classic.  She’s So Unusual is a classic, is the reason Lauper beat Madonna for the Best New Artist Grammy before Madonna overtook her as Lauper got sidetracked with the film bomb Vibes, wrestling and her later hit True Colors being hijacked for a TV ad.  But for one bright shining moment, just before Tina Turner’s Private Dancer and as Pat Benatar lost her way, Lauper was the most important female vocalist in the industry and She’s So Unusual is as much a triumph today as it ever was.  On SACD, it is a must-own.

 

For more Lauper music, try this coverage of her covers album At Last:

 

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/711/Cyndi+Lauper+-+At+Last+(CD)

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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