cyndi lauper

Expect the unexpected with Cyndi Lauper’s new album, visit to Oklahoma City
for The Oklahoman / NewsOK

Photo by Amber Sterling.

Musical icon, feminist, activist, author and winner of Tony, Grammy and Emmy awards: Cyndi Lauper’s list of accomplishments runs as long as her storied, three-decade career.

Although the eclectic 63-year-old singer says she has many dream projects in the works, when she makes a tour stop in Oklahoma City on Tuesday, her extracurricular to-do list is short: She wants to see the Vince Gill statue at Northwest Classen High School. “So funny,” Lauper said. “I gotta take a picture of myself in front of it so I can show him.”

An ’80s pop singer seems an unlikely Vince Gill fan, but unlikely is the name of Lauper’s game. Since the release of 1983’s “She’s So Unusual,” which spawned the megahit “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” Lauper has released nearly a dozen genre-spanning albums, from old standards to electronic dance music and even Memphis blues. Her latest, released earlier this year, is “Detour,” an amalgam of classic country hits. Gill is one of many superstars, including Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris and a yodeling Jewel, to lend their vocal talents.

Channeling Wanda

Lauper’s powerful voice sounds surprisingly at home subbing for Patsy Cline on tracks like “Walkin’ After Midnight” and “I Fall to Pieces,” with a few charming glimpses of her signature Queens accent here and there. The album opener, a take on Oklahoman Wanda Jackson’s “Funnel of Love,” could easily be mistaken for the original if not for modern production value.

“That song, I connected to. It was the first one where we realized, this is what (the record) should be,” Lauper said. “I wasn’t looking to reinvent the wheel, just have fun and be in the genre. It’s a singer’s record.”

“Funnel of Love” in particular may serve as an overdue homage to Jackson, whom Lauper looked to when she was studying female rock ‘n’ roll singers in her pre-solo rockabilly band Blue Angel.

“Without learning from her … I don’t think that I would’ve been able to sing ‘She Bop’ like that or even thought to sing it like that, or ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun,’ ” Lauper said. “I was able to do all those kind of rockabilly things. They called Wanda ‘the devil woman,’ because she was singing rock ‘n’ roll. They said she’s country, but she’s not.”She recalled arguing with industry professionals about Jackson’s lack of recognition when the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opened in the ’80s. “They should’ve inducted her,” Lauper said, “but they’ll never hear that. There’s no women on that board.” Jackson was later inducted in 2009.

Lauper is intimately familiar with butting heads with music’s upper echelon of suits and has not shied away from voicing her dissent, as far back as the start of her solo career. “In my band, it was easier, it was a given that we wrote together. But female singers sometimes have a Svengali standing behind them, and I hated that,” Lauper said. “I would be like, ‘Let me explain something to you: If you could sing, you could do all those things you think are so wonderful, but I have a voice and a mind along with it that I would like to use.’ ”

‘Some kind of feminist’

Lauper, who grew up in a household of women, said, “I just made decisions that I thought were right for women. People would ask, ‘Are you some kind of feminist?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, of course I am. I burned my training bra. Is that a problem?’ Gimme a break. That’s what feminism is. Figure out what your rights are.”

Even “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” was originally written by Robert Hazard in 1979 as a male- centric assessment of women’s carefree lives. Lauper rewrote it from a woman’s point of view, and it found massive success and became a call to arms for female autonomy.

More recently, she penned the music for “Kinky Boots,” a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical based on the book by Harvey Fierstein. The musical deals with themes of acceptance for different lifestyles through the lens of a factory worker’s friendship with a drag queen. Lauper, who is an outspoken activist and fundraiser for LGBT causes, found the characters close to her heart.

“I was able to work on a subject matter that was so much bigger than myself,” Lauper said. “It was a great thing to do, and with all those wonderful characters, I could sing any which way I wanted without someone telling me, ‘You can’t sing like that because you’re Cyndi Lauper,’ because I wasn’t.”

Telling Lauper she “can’t” has proved an exercise in futility during the past 33 years, and although she won’t divulge what’s next — “I don’t want to jinx it!” — her audience can be sure that regardless of format or style, Lauper’s true colors will unmistakably shine through.